


Whisper of breath

by CoopPenny



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Benjamin Parker is a good bro, Competent Tony, Ghosts, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Insecure Tony, M/M, Oblivious Tony Stark, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Scars, Secrets, So is Natasha, Spirits, Tony Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, defiantly needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7376032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoopPenny/pseuds/CoopPenny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spirit - the non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.</p><p>Tony's always seen them, always been able to interact with them, talk to them, he's even seen them as family. But his greatest pleasure is also his greatest secret...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Moving on

**Author's Note:**

> small story!!  
> Will be finished very soon!  
> So enjoy while it lasts!!

He sees them all the time.

Ever since he was little, he'd been able to see what no one else could. At first he thought that it was normal for their to be a sudden chill in the room, a flash of a face or a whisper of words. It was normal. They've always been there.

It was at 7 years of age that Tony realised that he was the only one. He'd asked his father about the people that visited and about a man called General Phillips that liked to tell Tony odd stories about a man called Steve Rogers. His father froze up and then, in a flash, backhanded him with such force that Tony toppled over. Howard then screamed at him until he run out of his fathers work space with the terrible words Howard threw his way turning into a constant whisper in the back of his mind for weeks afterwards. Tony never asked about them again.

After that, Tony stopped thinking of Howard as his dad and he found that the people that kept him company when he most needed it were dead and not visible to just anyone. General Phillips said that it was because he was special and that what Howard did to him was near unforgivable. But at the force of Howard's hurtful words, Tony only spoke to the spirits when he was alone.

A few years went by and Tony was confused as some of the very few spirits he'd seen always left in a bright glow, never to be seen again but General Phillips was a constant presence at Tony's side.

"How comes you don't move on like the rest of them?" a 10 year old Tony asked the General one day; his brown eyes forcibly big and shiny with fake tears while his hands were clasped together under his chin.

"You don't have to do the puppy-dog eyes, Tony." he chuckled slightly as he ruffled Tony's hair slightly, "I'm not ready to move on. Not yet. I've got a promise to keep and I like to think of myself as an honest man."

"What did you promise?"

The General smiled fondly at the curiosity in the young boys voice, "I promised to make you happy."

Tony innocently blinked up at the old, slightly transparent, wrinkled face before it turned into one of sadness, "I think I would be happier if you found a better place to go. I know you don't like it here." God, did Tony know. The wise man that had secretly raised him along with Jarvis, was beginning to look tired of his ever lasting existence, frustrated at his invisible state and helpless when Tony went to his room with bleeding slashes in his back from Howard's latest belt, unable to help due to it being too complex to get a grip on it.

"It'd make me happy of you were happy too..." Tony trailed off, not wanting him to leave but thinking that it was for the best. "You wont be leaving me on my own if that's what your worried about. I've got Jarvis that's taken a shine to my _marvellous_ personality." this time with an easy grin that he knew made the usually stern faced General laugh sometimes.

Tony's smile broadened when the General chuckled slightly.

It took Tony a year before he was able to get the General to let go and move on with the assurance that he'd be away from Howard soon enough. On that night, Tony quietly grieved the man that was like a father to him but settled knowing that he was in a better place than here with silent suffering that only an 11 year old could lend an ear to.

Tony was 17 when a spirit decided to contact him again.

It was at the dead of night and Tony was sound asleep in his joint bedroom with his best friend, James Rhodes. The temperature plummeted in the space of a few seconds that had Tony's eyes flying open. He looked over at his sleeping companion and sighed with relief when he gave off a loud snore that grated on his ears. Eyes narrowed, Tony looked around for the intruder only to freeze with surprise and horror.

There. Standing at the foot of his bed was Howard, face grim and eyes cold.

"Howard..." Tony breathed whilst avoiding eye contact.

Silence filled the room as it grew even colder.

"I knew that you were a failure... but I never expected you to be a freak as well..."

Those were the parting words before the room grew darker and Howard was gone. Moved on.

Over the years, Tony had made friends with a couple of the spirits that came and went. Some of them telling stories about their loved ones and others offering Tony help. Like that one time he was learning self defence and a spirit named Dum Dum decided to give him pointers on the subject. He learnt many languages both from the spirits and not. He even started to take up gymnastics and piano to help some of them move on when their request was to teach someone one last time (FYI both really hard to do). Even when they moved on with a white glow that enveloped their body, he still continued with the things he was taught; grown to love them and in memory of the passed spirits.

Then he was kidnapped in Afghanistan. His chest filled with sharp metal and a circle of bright blue light but he didn't really care. Well, he did as it left him changed and to struggle to adapt to the metal pressuring his lungs but it didn't affect him as much as Yinsen's death did.

The man had run out towards their captures armed with just a gun, screaming and randomly shooting in hopes of scaring the terrorists. When Tony found him next, the man was lying in a pool of his own blood, just about clinging to the last strings of life. The man gave one last breath with the words, "Don't waste your life". Tony could only watch as the man rose from his dead body, slightly transparent. He caught the glimpse of understanding and pity in the man's eyes before Tony proceeded to blow the terrorist base in a hot inferno.

Yinsen had decided to stay with him until Rhodey showed up with a helicopter, keeping him company until he was safe from death's jaws. Tony was roughly forced into a giant hug with his best friend as he caught a bright light in the corner of his eye, confirming Yinsen's departure.

The next spirit he saw was the one and only, Obadiah Stane. The man glowered at him from the corner of the living room as Tony stared blankly back at him. There was no words between them but the disgust was clear on his face as the room grew darker, through no fault of the lights, and he was gone.

After that, Tony moved on with his life, caught up in the land of the living and some of the kind spirits, that didn't want to move on yet, liked to visit him now and again.

It was just after the making of Stark Tower that anything interesting came his way and it was in the form of a bland faced Agent Coulson with the Avengers Initiative that he didn't qualify for.

But with the nagging of Pepper and the newest spirit that wanted to teach him how to bake called Benjamin Parker (strange name), Tony decided to give it a look and before he knew it he was in Germany aiming his rockets at a _definitely_ crazed demigod.

 A bunch of extremely weird things that he would rather forget happened in the space of just a couple of hours. The key events were that there was an alien invasion, they won, demigods can't take sex jokes and Captain America is actually a dick. Honestly, Tony tried being nice but one look at Rogers' judging eyes was enough to make Tony put on his Stark Act. It was a fake front but the most fun to play with.

The invasion didn't leave him unscratched so to say. The empty coldness that slowly filtered in and swallowed him in his dreams was made worse when he remembered the loneliness that had cursed him his entire life. His dreams were filled with a dark nothingness while the impending feeling of a slow and lonely death sank deep within his chest and heart more than his arc reactor ever could.

That was until the Avengers started to show up one by one.

He just walked into his living room, about two or three months after the failed invasion, to find none other than Steve Rogers sitting on his couch sketching in a note pad. Luckily, Steve hadn't noticed his presence yet, too invested in his drawing. Then Tony spotted Ben from across the room. When he made a gesture for the spirit to follow him, he lead them to the kitchen area.

"When the hell did he get here?!" Tony whisper shouted to the older transparent man.

Ben gave a shrug, "Found him the same way you did. Do you wanna do this another time?"

Tony gave an over exaggerated gasp and put his hand on his chest, "And miss out on the chance to make world piece waffles? No way, old man! You promised me!" Tony was openly whining now, "Rogers will be a while. He had paint and brushes next to him and he's only on the sketching side of things; it'd take a couple of hours until he was done."

Rolling his eyes, Ben made his way to the kitchen, mumbling something that sounded like 'dumb fizz' or 'damn kids'. Tony was leaning towards his second guess.

By the time, the world piece waffles were finished Tony had flour in his hair, batter all up his arms and on his clean-now-dirty shirt and Steve was sitting at the breakfast table in absolute bewilderment.

"What?" Tony asked defensively before he subtly nodded to Ben in farewell and thanks.

"Nothing, nothing." Steve said hastily, "I just... didn't peg you to be one to cook."

"I can cook just fine," Tony said with a bit more bite to it than intended, "I just got a friend to teach me to bake of few things."

"A friend?" Steve asked in that disbelieving voice again that got Tony's hackles rising farther.

"Yes. I am capable of having _friends_ you know? I'm not _that_ insufferable when I _like_ the person I talk to." Tony stated, none too kindly, "What are you doing in my home anyway? Thought you didn't like the building?"

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat and he avoided eye contact by staring ideally at the thick oak wood table. "I- I wanted to apologise. I know that I never did so before and I'm sorry about that too but all the things I said to you in the helicarrier... I was wrong to judge you in that kind of way. And as to what I'm doing here: I have no where else to go and this was the best place to spend the night."

Then, Steve did the worst thing imaginable. He looked at Tony with the biggest, most convincing puppy eyes in the entire universe. Now, that just wasn't fair!

Tony huffed "Yeah, well, your forgiven. Most of what you said was probably true anyway... I'm sorry for what I said as well."

Before, Steve could say anything else, Tony grabbed a waffle from the stack of five that he made and left in a hurry for his lab not wanting to spend anymore time with Rogers.

After that, the rest of then started to pile in. Clint came in next and nearly died when Tony threw a blow torch at his head ("Dude, what the hell!" "Don't use the vents!!"). Next was Natasha with a scarily blank look as she said, "Better than SHIELD" and walked passed Tony without another word. Tony then found a very lost Bruce in one of his labs. It was just Thor that was too busy to drop by yet.

Soon his had a tower full of Avengers and less privacy all of his own to speak to his spirit friends that dropped by now and then. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the team found out. He just didn't expect it to go out like the way it did.

Ben was teaching Tony how to make the perfect batch of peanut butter cookies when Thor came swooping in from Asgard, his brother in prison and duties complete, he was able to visit again.

"Ah! My Shield Brothers and Sister! It is good to see you again!" Thor boomed from the living room where the rest of the team were watching The Wizard of Oz; the loud voice easily reaching Tony. As he put the cookies in the oven, Tony excused himself from Ben and went to greet Thor. It's what a good host would do, isn't it?

"Sup Thor." Tony said lazily as he flopped into the nearest available seat and sighed in content.

"Friend Anthony! It is good to see you!" Thor returned the greeting in his own little way before he spoke to the whole team, "I bring news from Asgard of one of our own. Friend Anthony is what we call a Spirit Walker!"

Okay. Screw being a good host, he was out of here.

Just as he was about to get up, he was stopped by the soul trembling stare that Natasha shot his way and reluctantly sat back down.

Yep. Screwed.

"What do you mean, Thor?" Steve asked as he eyed Tony out of the corner of his eye.

Thor seemed overly happy to be able to explain this and was completely oblivious to Tony's discomfort.

"Our friend, Anthony, has been given the gift of sight as he is able to walk among the spirits in this realm and others if he were to go there. Very few are blessed with this gift and able to use it properly. Anthony is the first to complete both in a millennia!" Thor explained with looking at Tony with pride at being friends with the extremely rear Spirit Walkers.

"Are you saying that Tony can see and communicate with the dead?" Bruce asked, disbelieving.

Everyone looked at Tony, eye brows raised and waiting for an answer.

Tony's nerves were fraying under their stares and he could feel himself growing hot under the excruciating stares. 

"Um... Oh! I think the cookies are done!" he exclaimed as he tried to run for the elevator but it failed when he ended up on the floor, looking up at the ceiling with a dazed expression while Natasha gave him a blank look from above.

"Stark..." she said in an oh so scary voice.

He didn't want to, like really really didn't want to. So many things could go wrong with this... "Um... I may or may not be able to see spirits... All the time" he admitted timidly as he peeled himself off the floor.

Then there was the inevitable. The silence. The shock that seemed to ripple through the room, sans Thor who was grinning ear to ear, oblivious to everyones shock. But when they got over it, they didn't do what he expected them to do, which was call Fury and tell the man that he was way more crazy than they originally thought. No, they didn't do that. Instead they bombarded him with questions and demands, Natasha the demanding one.

"Guys is this really necessary?" Tony whined as he gave Ben a glare as he laughed at Tony's situation. Whoever said old people where really nice could go die. Benjamin Parker was on his Bitch List...

"Is there anyone here now?" Steve asked curiously.

"...Yes. His name's Ben and he's the one that's been teaching me to bake. You can stop laughing you little traitor!" Tony exclaimed as he stared at what everyone else thought to be an empty space by the book shelf.

"'Tis truly wonderful, is it not?" Thor exclaimed with a bright smile.

"Yay!" Clint remarked sarcastically, "The only normal person on our team isn't so normal at all which makes everything so much more complicated and crazy."

"Hey! The cookies are beginning to burn and I'd appreciate it if I could get to them before they pass the point of no return! It's peanut butter cookies too!" Tony pleaded with a wink and a grin. "I promise to answer all of your questions after I save them." he added for Natasha's benefit.

It was hours before everyone was satisfied enough to go to bed, finally allowing Tony to breath and tense shoulders to slump.

"You did good Tones." Ben said as he patted Tony's back, "Someone was bound to find out sooner or later."

Tired, brown eyes lifted to Ben's glistening blue ones, "But how much longer can I hide my other secrets? How do I explain..."

Ben gave Tony a gentle smile.

"If they are your friends, they will stay with you."

 

 

 


	2. Try to understand...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is long overdue so I'm really sorry about that but been a little distracted with my new found temporary free-school life.  
> Anyway... here's the next one!!

Tony hardly knew what to do. The tingling sensations along his back almost reaching painful as he stared, seemingly in a daze, at his hands. He couldn't shake the memory of sluggish, dripping liquid running down his back and the sound of a loud smack as something wicked and hard came across his bare back once more.

Heaving a shaky sigh, Tony slowly, with slightly trembling hands, rubbed his eyes and inched the bridge of his nose before he looked sorrowfully at the glow of a scene in front of him.

It was late and he still had to sort through the list of possible interns for this year. Pepper had picked out the ones that had the best grades and the best intentions for the company (aka: getting rid of opposition spies). He only had to do this last thing before he was allowed to go to bed. What was he kidding... He'd probably do 10 minutes of nightmares before he'd scream himself awake and worked in his lab till morning.

Another sigh escaped him as he scanned the list with quick eyes but he instantly became more alert when he came across a familiar name among the others that seemed to all blur together.

"Ben!" Tony called, not taking his eyes off of the name on the screen.

A kind warmth filled the room only a moment later, indicating Ben's arrival. He knew it was Ben. He was one of the warmest souls that he had the pleasure to come into contact with. He's warmth rivalled the good General's from his child hood and the kind stranger who liked to call himself Dum Dum.

"You okay Tones?" he asked with a hint of worry as Tony had never called for him before.

"Yeah, yeah!" Tony rushed to say, "Everything's fine but... I was wondering... Do you know anyone called Peter Parker?"

His questions gained an almost instant reaction from Ben as the old man had an expression that met half way of fondness and pain. Must be a relative.

"Yeah," Ben said, his voice as distant as the look in his eyes before he snapped out of it, "His my nephew. My wife and I practically raised him when my brother and his wife passed." a small, sad smile was upon his features now, "He's incredible and I've looked over him, since my... since my death, watching all the good that he's doing on the streets... He's truly one of the greatest soul to walk the earth."

Tony said nothing as Ben talked about his nephew like it was his son, the love and adoration was clear in his voice and Tony could feel the love emitting off of him. But Tony soon snapped out of it when he thought over what Ben had said. In a rush, Tony quickly brought out one of the news paper headlines that said, 'Spider-Man: Good or Evil?'.

Looking back at Ben, Tony got the reaction that he was looking for. The transparent figure was clenching his fists as he took in the headlines and then the text bellow. His eyes looked like ones of fierce protection.

"I think you need to tell me more about your son, Ben." Tony said softly as he turned off the headline.

The spirit nodded his head, eyes hopeful as he looked at Tony.

It was one hell of a story and Tony couldn't help but be drawn in by the heartbreaking tale of a teenage boy that had gone through more than his fair share of pain and how he had been alone in his fight and that he thought that he couldn't tell anyone. Tony couldn't help but compare Peter to himself when he was younger. Angry. Drawn. Defensive. Though they were for opposite reasons entirely, Tony could still relate to the super-powered high-schooler.

"If you want me to, I could create safe-gauds for him." Tony suggested as Ben had come to the end of his tale, "Look, I'm gonna give him an internship anyway, he's a seriously smart kid and if you would put the at ease then I will."

Ben was shocked into silence so Tony carried on, "I know his identity but it's the matter of if he needs back-up. He's got no allies out there but he can make one in me. I promise, I'll look after him and protect him. It's the least I could do for you, right?" Tony said softly as he stepped around his desk and laid a hand on Ben's shoulder. Tony could feel nothing but warmth as he rested his hand on the shoulder.

Eyes shining with barely suppressed tears, Ben gave Tony a watery smile as he took Tony's hand between his own, encasing it with a never-ending warmth.

"Please, look after my family?" Ben asked as his form brightened.

Tony let loose one lonely tear as he watched his friend move on, clinging to the world all this time for the security of his family, "I'll look after them," he said in a strong voice that rung with truth, "I promise. Go ahead to the better place, will ya?" Tony joked with a bright smile to accompany his bright eyes.

Ben nodded in thanks, a brilliant white light surrounding his whole body but his face, before he faded, Ben gave a small chuckle and then said in the most sincere voice he could manage, "It was a pleasure to know the real you... Tony" and then he was gone.

Only a few moments passed where Tony just stood there, not moving, tears running freely down his face as he thought over the memories he had with Benjamin Parker. His chest contracting ever so slightly, Tony turned back to the screen and checked Peter Parker for internship. Tony would have to bring in Peter at a slow pace and he couldn't outright expose the kid either. He'd definitely had to go slow if he was to get the kid to accept his help in the first place.

It was an hour of scheming and completing his actually work before he was allowed any semblance of rest.

 

\-----------

 

Natasha wasn't one for surprises, she liked to know everything about everyone and the situation with Tony had put a damper on her views on her skills. She wasn't sure if it was true but according to Thor and Tony it was. She really needed to tell Fury about these new developments...

Her assessment on Tony was as accurate as she could make it in three months but certain parts of her assessment were not adding up with the man that she's now lived with for the passed month. He seemed... shy for lack of better words, completely the opposite of what she had observed as his PA. The new information that told her she was wrong wasn't varying well with her.

She'd been going through her old report of Tony and at the differences with the report and the man she was seeing now; it's like she observed a stranger... In her confusion and hopelessness, she decided to take a break from the mind numbing words that seemed to all but merged together the longer she stared at it so she started to make her way towards the gym area just a floor bellow hers.

As she drew closer, she heard the repetitive thumps and the light huff of breath. Rounding the corner, Natasha saw the yellow glow of the lights coming from the crack underneath the door. She couldn't help the flare of joy as she thought about Steve being her sparing partner, he'd be a worthy opponent to take her mind off of Stark...

Opening the door and blinking against the sudden flood of light, Natasha almost let lose a gasp as she found that it wasn't Steve. Stark was standing in the middle of the boxing ring and hitting a dummy opponent, his hits were fast and accurate and the power behind them where reflected with the shift of surprisingly good amount of muscle under his skin. His breathing was even and he glared at the dummy so hard that Natasha was surprised that it hadn't melted. Tony wore no shit as he attacked the target with a vicious rhythm letting Natasha see the long thin strips of raised white skin all over his back and on the upper parts of his shoulders. What was more surprising was that Stark's eyes screamed hurt and grief as tears streamed down his cheeks, he made no move to brush them away as he abused the dummy with shockingly high kicks added in the mix of hits.

Before she could be seen, Natasha closed the door again, only leaving a slight crack of light to so she could still see into the room.

Her eyes were huge with shock as Stark made a perfect backflip with no small amount of grace and continued his fast as lightning attacks. How could she not have known?! Those kind of techniques were of years and years of training and where has those scars come from?

Slowly, she began to make her way down the hall and to the elevator, thinking the whole way. She couldn't take her mind off of the scars or the tears in Starks eyes that had yet to be shed. In the three months that she had spied on him, the three months that he had been slowly dying, he had never shed a tear or looked remotely sad during those times, angry, confused, betrayed maybe but never grieving. She never even seen any kind of physical ability that he could do during a fight without his suit.

Was she so set out to hate the man that he portrayed to the whole world as that she completely missed all of his masks? Why hadn't she seen the scars? It was her job to know everything, so why hadn't she known this?!

The scars!!

"Oh shit..." Natasha mumbled as a sudden realisation came to her. She'd seen scars like that before...

 She'd seen them on Clint. He'd told her about his childhood and the harsh hand of his father towards him and his brother. The thin white lines that were barely noticeable to the untrained eye. He'd said that it with a thick leather belt that were the worst of them all. Tony had those scars all over his back and shoulders, a lot more than what Clint had on his...

Natasha felt the blood drain from her face as she came to the most obvious conclusion and it was one that sickened her to no end...

Looks like he wasn't a spoilt brat after all...

 

\----------

 

Tony wouldn't be surprised if his loud protests were heard from three levels down with how this was going. They probably heard his _manly_ yell when Natasha practically jumped him in the hallways. Who does that anyway?!

"Hey! Hey! Stop it! Wait... NOOOOOO! No, no, no, no! Anywhere but there! Please! I'm sorry I dyed all of your clothes pink! But you have to admit that was a little funny- OW! OKAY! FINE! I'M SORRY!"

He really shouldn't have been surprised when every eye in the gym area was trained on a very loud Tony and a very scary Natasha that was leading the billionaire by his ear. No one dared to laugh at the situation... Except maybe Clint.

"Oh my God! JARVIS, are you taking a video of this?" the archer asked between fits of chuckles.

"JARVIS, don't you dare- OW!"

When the woman finally let go, Tony found himself standing in the middle of the boxing ring with Natasha looking at him with something equivalent to a predator. Her red coloured lips twitching up slightly in the corners as she wrapped up her fists.

After she was finished the extremely intimidating procedure of the wrapping, the devil-woman crossed her arms and said in a voice that was completely devoid of emotion, "You will buy me a new wardrobe and you will do it in the presence of me being with you while you buy every item of clothing that I desire from one shop to another. You will not be doing this again unless you really want to suffer the true consequences; this is your warning. In the mean time, you will spar with me and you will not hold back like you always do whenever fighting. If I find that you are holding back then I will hurt you. Do I make myself clear?"

Tony's eyes were as wide as saucers as he quickly nodded and started to wrap his own hands for protection.

He barely put the roll down before the woman was upon him with a swift kick to his face. It was only pure instinct that he ducked her attack in time but what he didn't mean to do was bend over backwards and backflipped away from her...

"Shit!" he shouted when he realised his mistake. He only got a glimpse of the shocked expressions of Steve and Clint before he was forced to block another attack.

It was five minutes into the fight and Tony was finding it really hard not to take her out entirely. Her hits too fast and would hurt too much if he left it to strike true. He was dodging left and right but it was hardly enough to kept the Widow's blows from getting to him sometimes. The bruising was starting to multiply into a collection as another boney fist connected with his ribs.

"Come on, Stark!" Natasha prompted, voice dangerously calm "What are you gonna do when you have no suit? What are you going to do when your surrounded and have no bacup or suit to help? Are you going to hold back then? Or are you truly a _pathetic_ fighter? Unable to hold your own without a metal shell to protect you from the world."

Tony could hear the Captains loud protests to Natasha's continued 'game' and the harsh words that were like venom to Tony. He wasn't pathetic. No. It didn't matter how many times his father had called him that while white hot pain from his back made him scream and cry. No. He wasn't pathetic... He wasn't...

It happened too fast.

Too fast for him to be aware of it.

As Natasha came in for the next punch, he acted without realising. It happened with a whirl of fists and kicks as Tony attacked faster than anyone thought him capable of. He blocked her attack and pulled her off balance with the arm, he twisted and punched her in the ribs while he kicked the back of her legs. By this time he was directly behind her as he grabbed her head and threw her back against the mats of the boxing rings with enough force he knock out the breath from her longs; too winded to get up again.

He was trapped in a haze while he did the calculations and variables in his head and hit at what he thought of at the time was a danger. The word 'pathetic' making him go on automatic defence, uncaring with who he was fighting with. Only caring about the fact that he would make it out alive.

Coming out of the haze, Tony was able to catch Clint jumping over the ropes and running to Natasha who was still struggling to breath on the floor.

"What the hell, Stark!" yelled the Captain as he stormed over to the genius, who could only stare.

"I... I'm..." 

"Your what?" Steve challenged with a shove at Tony's chest, "I thought that you at least had the decency to not hit a woman but here we are. Tell me Tony are you proud of what you've done? Was it empowering?" Steve gave another rough shove to Tony's chest before he hissed lowly, "Your father would be disgusted..."

Tony felt like his throat was retracting. It felt like he could hardly breath. He couldn't see! Everything was blurry, he couldn't make out anything!! He felt his back and shoulders burn with the accusation in Steve's voice. He could once again see the disgust that Howard gave him, even after death.

"I-I didn't mean--" he stared through gasps of breath, "Please-- I- I did't mean... It was an acc- accident!"

Tears were now streaming down his and he was no longer in the gym, surrounded by his fellow Avengers. No. He was trapped in the swirl of all the pain and abuse that had ever been thrown his way. His whole form was trembling as he pulled at his thick t-shirt, finding the heat almost painful and the burning of the mass of wounds on his back brushing against the fabric near agonising. It hurt! It hurt so much!

He could could distantly hear the screams and the chaos that was taking part in the real world.

Could hear the faint calling of his name, terror clear even with its muffled sound.

Then there were gentle hands at the sides of his face, so he focused on that. Focused on the softness and tenderness of the hands stroking through his hair, scratching over his scalp pleasantly. Slowly, slowly, he came back from the torturing darkness.

To his surprise, he was laying on his back, head propped up on a cushiony thigh and the thin, delicate fingers still brushing over his hair. He found that his face was wet and that his throat felt sore.

"Tony?" came a tentative feminine voice from above.

He looked up to find Natasha looming over him, face framed by the large curls of blood red hair. It was only then that everything seemed to piece together and he did't like what he solved.

Sitting up quickly, he found everyone else crowding around but he was unwilling to face anyone after what he'd just done.

Excusing himself as fast as he could, he kept his head down as he passed everyone and walked out without a word.

He didn't see the crushed look on Steve's face.

He didn't see the guilt on Natasha's face.

And he didn't see the understanding on Clint's face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ToT it's so sad!!!!  
> I'm sorry for the feels but you have to understand that I love the feels! XD  
> I'll update soon, Promise!!


	3. Musically Inclined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, so, so, sorry for how long this has taken me to update and I cannot apologise enough for this! But This story is nearly done! All I have to do is read over a few of the chapters and it'll be done!  
> So here it is!
> 
> Note: /(translation)/  
> btw, this will be put in italics… I just don’t know how to do it on here…

The skyline of New York at sunset was beautiful. It was a picture of a million squares of glass reflecting off of each other, making the scene a mass of warm orange. The orange glow behind the sharp edges of each building portrayed them to be softer instead of the cutting edges that came with the century's modern era. Anyone on a bad day could take pleasure in the beautiful scene before them, a faint smile on their faces as nature gave them a small show before they walked on again to continue with their life.

Although, not everyone was able to enjoy the light display. Natasha was facing the lights, her face glowing with the orange light itself but she hardly noticed as she gave another swig of vodka. She'd already emptied two bottles and she was half way down her third but she found herself only slightly tipsy, much to her disappointment. No matter what, she couldn't get the image out of her head.

The image of Tony crying, sobbing openly with his eyes clouded as he was momentarily lost to the world of the living. She had no idea that would be the effect of them sparing. She wanted him to have more respect as a fighter than someone that could pilot the suit. More respect than someone who was expendable...

When she saw him fighting, no suit, fast and strong, hardships displayed on his back and emotions running high by the sheer expression on his face. It was at that point that Natasha knew that Tony was one of them and not someone who skipped out easily on life and not someone who was easily expendable - as she had implied in her first report. Tony had been through his very own hell and to make life easier for him, she thought that maybe she could show the team that Tony was more to respect than for his tech.

Her plan had many faults, more than she realised and she didn't count on the Captain to be as stupid as to pull the 'girl card' on Tony.

Just as she took another swig of her vodka, Natasha felt eyes on her from above but she intensely knew who this was, Clint, so she didn't do anything.

It wasn't long before he came over and silently sat next to her. She passed on her bottle to him and he greatly accepted, taking a gulp and hissing as the strong alcohol burned his throat, before quickly passing it back to her.

They sat there in silence looking at nothing as they faced the large window but Natasha knew that the silence wouldn't last long between them and that Clint would soon say what he wanted to.

"I know why you did it..." he started but waited for her to face him, to see how serious he was, before he carried on, "There's more to him than any of us ever thought. The ghosts was something I wouldn't have even dreamed of but that fight and... his reaction... that tells us something more, doesn't it?"

Natasha only nodded, lips pursed in a thin line as she ran the memory over and over again in her mind. She was brought out of her thoughts when a large rough hand closed over her own.

"Is he like me?" He asked, voice hesitant. He slowly rubbed a hand down his face as she gave a small regrettable nod, "Shit," he breathed, "We really messed up on his character study... I think everyone did."

Natasha could only nod at Clint's observation. They had both royally screwed up and the mass amounts of SHIELD files on the Stark family would have to be discarded due to how far from the truth they were. Coulson was going to flip...

"I don't know what to do..." she finally admitted in a soft voice.

Clint's only response was to put an arm over her shoulders and pull her body to his own so she could seek momentary salvation from her ultimate failure...

 

\----------

 

Tony spent the majority of his day after the incident hiding in his lab. He'd finally had a full blown breakdown in from of half of his team. They may have been confused about his reactions at first but he was under no illusion that they wouldn't figure it out - if they haven't yet at least.

Almost everyone except the Spy Duo had tried to get him out. The Good Captain had threatened to break down the door and Tony's only response was to double lock the titanium doors with huge bars over the first door and adding a second titanium door on his side of the barricaded doorway. Thor had tried to bribe him with pop-tarts and Bruce had offered some experimentation time together. But Tony wouldn't listen to any of them as he focused on his work. He produced new products and improved old ones and he even did all the paper work that he had been behind lately (Pepper would surely be impressed).

He had his own coffee machine in the lab and had gotten some sleep. Although, wasn't able to get much due to a round a bad nightmares that left him screaming and tearing his only shirt to shreds to keep the material away from the barely healing wounds that he had imagined in his dream... He also had enough food to last him a week, maybe a few more days if he rationed well enough.

However, on the third day, he had to step out of the lab. He stank and was smothered in grease stains that made his hair stick up in odd places. In his left hand, he held his ripped t-shirt - the rag also covered in grease. Slowly but surely, Tony made it to the kitchen, uncaring of his bare back due to his lack of sleep, he was way too tired to do the sneaking around and he really wanted something other than coffee before he got ready (he also figured that people would know any way and hiding them was just the delay of the inevitable).

To his very displeasure, someone was in the kitchen. As he rounded the corner, he let out a relieved sigh to see that it was only Thor; munching happily on some chocolate pop-tarts.

With a glower, Tony quickly went into the fridge, grabbing some slice of cake and left over pizza before he grabbed a fresh carton of orange juice as Thor greeted him in the usual way, "G-Good morning, Man of Iron. I am glad to see you out of the confines of your room..." Well, mostly usual. The awkward nervousness was plainly there in his voice and Tony couldn't help but glance over his shoulder at the demigod before he fixed himself a glass of juice (he needed something else other than coffee to wake him up...).

Taking a health gulp of the juice and a large bite of the pizza, Tony turned to face the god completely, instantly taking in that way Thor's eyes went to the old scars on his shoulders. Just as the thunder god opened his mouth, a question clearly on the tip of his tongue, Tony quickly swallowed and cut him off, "I don't want to talk about it."

The god instantly shut his mouth, visibly trying to avoid looking too long at Tony's scars. The billionaire could only sigh and roll his eyes, too tired and depressed to actually care about his other teammates finding out about the scars, before he started to talk, "Everyone has a past, buddy. Mine's just not how everyone expected it to be." He gave the god a small encouraging smile, before he turned to leave the kitchen damn near colliding into a huge chest.

Regrettably, Tony sighed and looked up to meet sky-blue eyes that were wide with shock. The Captain seemed frozen in place which Tony took advantage of as he ducked under the massively muscled arm, that the Captain had used to lean against the wall, and legged it to the elevator. It was only a second or two later that he heard the hurried padding of feet and Steve ordering him to stop. When he jumped into the elevator, the door quickly closed on the Captain's face. Thank Science for JARVIS...

"Thanks, J." Tony said, slightly breathless, as the metal box went up to his pent house.

There he got showered, dressed and shaved for work in the lower levels of the tower. He didn't even look like he'd been hauled up in the lab for days and he looked as sharp and awake as he always did.

Quickly, he made it down to the lower levels until he was in the lobby, shades firmly in place as he looked for a specific person of interest. It wasn't long before he found the guy he was after, the kid's shabby and worn clothes stood out from the sharp, dark suits around him and he was tall and lanky as any teenager his age should be. The kid stood there with all the other interns, his head bowed slightly as he read off of a sheet of paper.

As fast as he could, he dodged around the crowds and walked over to the group, linking his arm with the teen's, before giving the kid's superior a small greeting and explanation before he was dragging the kid away to the elevator. The kid seemed too in shock to do or say anything at first but he snapped out of it when the metal doors slid closed.

"Wh... What?" he asked faintly with a confused frown.

Tony only smiled brightly up at the teen and held out his hand, waiting for the kid to timidly shake it before he started to talk, "So, Peter Parker. It's nice to finally meet you in person! You can call me Tony! How would you feel about helping me in the lab today?"

Peter seemed to only nod dumbly as he stared at Tony with shock-wide eyes, apparently still processing the information.

As the elevator dinged to a stop, Tony nudged the kid out into his high tech lab, one that he had not been using the past three days (Jeez! Could you imagine the smell?).

Tony had explained everything there was to know about the lab and working with him, dragging the teen to a few of his inventions and how to use certain pieces of equipment, "You want to study biology don't you? We have all the stuff you could need here so you can have fun and stuff like that." Tony carried on cheerily, just waiting for the teen to sort out his mind enough to talk.

"Wait," he finally said and Tony turned to look at the kid, who was shifting from foot to foot nervously, "W-Why am I here?"

Hesitantly, Tony could only gesture for them to sit down somewhere in the lab, which happened to be a pair of stools, and looked straight into the kid's eyes. He seemed determined and suspicious as he looked back at Tony, thinking that there was some alter-motive or something, "Look, I saw your application to come here and I saw your grades and couldn't help but think that they were outstanding! But," he continued, a more serious note to his voice, "There is something else..."

At Peter's curious frown, Tony carried on, "I knew your uncle, Ben. He was a good friend of mine a long time ago," he smiled at the memory of the old man's spirit, the fire in his eyes and the kindness in his heart, "He, er, he caught me wondering the streets, drunk off of my ass, and said a few things for me to think about... He was a really good man and I didn't know about his death until it was too late to go to the funeral, I paid my respects of course, and then I saw your name and I really wanted to meet you."

Tony could tell that he wasn't completely sold with the kid as his eyes seemed to harden and narrow at Tony. A minute passed before he decided to let it go and nod his head, brown eyes turning a little bit softer than they were.

"Oh, yes! I also wanted to give you a new uniform to replace that awful spandex!" Tony said cheerfully as he jumped off of his seat and walked to the screens that were at the back of the lab.

He didn't have to wait long for the kid to come out of his shock and practically explode,

"WHAT?!"

 

\-----------

 

At the end of the day, Tony could only chuckle at his phone as he flicked through a round of pictures of Peter's shocked face that JARVIS had taken for him. It was quality entertainment in his eyes and the slow video of the kid's reaction would definitely help as leverage in the near future.

His smile instantly slipped off as he came face to face with none other that Natasha in the corridor leading to his room. She looked hesitant; despite her usual blank face and analysing eyes.

They stood there for a few minutes before she spoke but not in English or even Russian... She was speaking Italian, "Volevo scusarmi. Non intendevo per quello che è successo un paio di giorni fa a ... fare danni." _(I wanted to apologise. I didn't mean for what happened a couple of days ago to... do damage.)_

Her voice may have been monotone and flat but Tony could easily see the regret and guilt in her jade, green, eyes. A small smile reluctantly curved up the corners of his lips, giving her a small smile as he spoke in the foreign language as well, "Grazie. So che non volevi, ma perché l'hai fatto? Inoltre come lo sapevi?” _(Thanks. I know you didn't mean it but why did you do it? Also how did you know?)_ he said the last part in more of a casual voice.

Natasha seemed to shift a little nervously at Tony's question, she didn't move much but she still moved enough for him to catch it. He could tell that she had all the best intensions for him and that she was trying to help him out, he could see that in all of her body language that she tired to hide. Not that she would have ever been able to get away with it anyway, he was trained to notice the smallest of movements - for business purposes, of course.

Finally, she looked back up, her back ramrod straight, like she was reporting for duty with Fury or something. The stance reminded him too much of what he had to do for Howard when he wanted to speak with Tony but he ignored the memory completely and instead focused on Natasha as she slipped into German, "Ich habe dich in der Turnhalle kämpfen sehen und du hast Zeichen von jahrelangem Training mit verschiedenen Techniken gezeigt und ich wollte, dass du im Team als eine Person respektierst wirst statt nur für deine Technologie. Es ist offensichtlich genug, dass es nicht ganz funktioniert hat…” _(I saw you fighting in the gym and you showed signs of years and years of training with different techniques and I wanted to get you more respected in the team as a person than just for your tech. It's obvious enough that it didn't completely work…)_

Silence followed as Tony only stared at Natasha and she stared back, not quite keeping the desperate look out of her eyes before he nodded and she nodded back.

He turned around and gestured for her to follow as he asked, "¿Tocas algún instrumento?” _(Do you play any instruments?)_ this time he said it in Spanish.

With a small nod, Natasha followed Tony to his private music room and sat down by the piano. With sleek, gentle fingers, he lifted the fall that covered the keys and beckoned her over.

"Вы знаете, как играть в это?” _(Do you know how to play this?)_ he asked in Russian this time.

Natasha shook her head, an ease settling into her shoulders at the sound of her mother tongue. He took her hands gently in his and began the first of many lessons on how to play.

They stayed their well into the night, talking in different languages and playing different pieces on the different instruments around the room. It was the first time in a long time that Natasha and Tony smiled so freely, occasionally laughing together and soon, they both fell asleep on the sofa in the music room, Tony positioned underneath as Natasha laid her head in his chest, off to the side of the metal ring around the Reactor’s light.

All in all, it was a good day for Tony...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the Natasha and Tony friendship! I just couldn't resist!  
> More will come soon! That's a promise, 'cause I've already written it! XD


	4. New Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the next one! Yay!  
> Just a short-ish chapters with a lot of fluff (you have been warned)  
> Hope you enjoy!

After Tony and Natasha dealt with the crisis before hand, they started to spend more time together, having conversations with foreign words and switching languages at every other sentence. It would be a bit of an understatement to say that the rest of the team were shocked that Tony knew so many languages in the first place (except Bruce because he was a legend and also heard Tony swearing in several languages whenever he dropped something heavy on his foot when doing science) let alone that he was hanging out with Natasha.

If anything, Tony was the most surprised. It was true that he had known Natasha longer than he had known any other Avenger but he never expected them to bond on so many levels. They even bonded over comfortable clothes to wear as everyone assumed that Natasha wore tight things all the time, due to her suit, and everyone assumed that Tony only wore clean, cut and pressed suits - according to the public that is. It was kind of ironic that the two would wear the most worn and oldest items of clothing they had whenever they got the chance.

Tony never even expected to have so much fun with the spy either. They watched foreign movies that no one else understood and they also spent a lot of time in the music room teaching each other different instruments the other didn't know.

Even Clint was surprised at how much the two had taken to each other but Tony found that he was getting along with Clint better now. He sometimes joined him and Natasha on movies he could understand and he had taken to spending some time in Tony's lab, just watching the genius move about in his natural environment.

Tension on the top floors of the Tower had cooled down; even some of the spirits that visited him could tell that he was doing better than before and a new spirit had shown their face. The old woman appeared to be a retired ballet dancer that had put her remaining days in preparing ballet recitals for little kids, apparently she used to perform on stages as well; the woman practically lived, breathed and ended with ballet and it appeared she wanted to move on that way as well. She wanted to see a well presented ballet recital and it looked like Tony would have to learn a new hobby...

Natasha was apparently the answer to that as well. She knew ballet like the back of her hand and according to her, it was just extend from his gymnastic skills anyway. They met up in the communal gym almost everyday to practice and Tony was almost dying by the end of the first week. Different muscles were being stretched and exercised and it was killing him from the inside out! The spirit, who's name was Mary, could only laugh and give him moral support as she too gave him input.

When the rest of the team heard about it, they could only raise their eye-brows at the idea of doing something so feminine (lets face it, ballet is usually a girl thing to do…). However, Clint was the worst as it just gave him a round of new nicknames to give him and Tony often found that Clint put pink bows in his hair while he was in his science zone in the lab. The worst thing the archer ever did was line frilly pink material to all of his clothes, Tony just ripped the pieces off after he burned all of Barton's clothes and covered every surface on his floor in feathers. The curse of Tony's name could be heard from three floors up, which completely made his day!

Everything in the Tower was good and Tony found that he was being invited to more and more team activities when before he was rarely wanted around the group. They all seemed to have put the incident in the gym behind them and acted completely normal around him. The only problem would be that Steve always seemed to be cautious around him...

It was more often than not that Tony caught the Good Captain looking at Tony with a weird expression, like he was just waiting for Tony to collapse on the floor and start balling his eyes out again. It set Tony on edge, he didn't like being alone with their Fossilised Captain, as he always looked like he wanted to bring up that day that Tony was more than happy to forget and explode into a million pieces.

As Natasha and Tony were in the gym again, going through sets of ballet dance stances (he'd gotten quite good at those if he said so himself!) and he decided to bring up his concerns with her.

"Hey, Nat," Tony asked, trying for nonchalance but obviously failing as Natasha looked up and narrowed her jade green eyes at him, "Is it me, or does the Captain seem a little _edgy_ around me?"

Natasha only stared at him for a couple of seconds before she replied, eyes still narrowed, "Why do you ask?"

Rolling his eyes at her question for his question, he decided to be just be forward about it, "Do you think The Captain is going to bring up the time in the gym when I had a flashback?"

There was no answer for a couple of minutes as she adjusted his stance for something more graceful and elegant, "Why do you ask?"

Tony could only glare at the woman. He only glared harder when he saw the small twitch of her lips in a show of amusement, "Every time I'm around him, he's always giving me these weird looks and he keeps on trying to get me alone to talk about it and I really don't want to."

"How do you know he wants to bring up that time?" she asked, raising a thin eye-brow at him.

"I know because one morning, when I was getting coffee, it was just me and Rogers and he started off at, 'Oh, Stark, I really wanted to talk to you about what happened in the gym' and then he cut himself off because Bruce, bless his soul, walked in! I don't want to bring it up and the only reason I can think that he'd want to is to threaten me with going to a therapist or getting kicked off the team!" Tony stressed, his words flying out of his mouth with such speed that he could see that Natasha needed a few seconds to catch up.

She furrowed her brow and pursed her lips before she shook her head, "I think he means well Tony. He’s just concerned about you."

Tony gave a small snort to that comment. Steve? Concerned? About him?! No way. "No way. Cap isn't concerned about me, he doesn't know anything about me, he's concerned about the team and that's it. He'd bench me with any excuse he got..."

Natasha didn't say anything after that as they returned to their lesson and Tony was in too much pain to bother with a conversation for the rest of it.

Once they were done, Tony practically face-planted his pillows before going straight to dream world, he never would have guessed that Natasha stayed up to see to his concerns...

 

\----------

 

It was at the dead of night and Steve couldn't help but sigh as he dank half of his glass of freshly poured, ice-cold water before sticking it back under the tap to top it off again.

He didn't know why but it had become habit for Steve to grab a glass of water in the night, he didn't really care about the time and his lack of sleep didn't effect his internal instinct to rise at the crack of dawn like he did back in the 1940's.

Looking back, his new habit of getting water in the middle of the night hadn't started that long ago and he didn't really want to stop now. Steve was beyond the point of knowing if he really got up for the water or if he got up in the hopes of running into Tony along the way. He'd been meaning to talk to the genius in private, for a while now, and it had never been great time to ask for a few seconds of his time as the smaller man seemed to be avoiding him like the plague, and Steve always hesitated to talk to him, before he ran down the hall - he wasn't kidding either, Tony had literally ran down the hall and into the elevator to get away from him... Twice...

Ever since the time in the gym, Steve couldn't help but see Tony as more human than he did before. Before the Avengers, he didn't like the genius one bit, thinking him arrogant and selfish but, in truth, Steve had just been reading another's words. With all the articles about Tony Stark, Steve hadn't really seen him as a person who had feelings and a life behind the camera lens' that followed him around ever since he was a child.

The media had constantly described Tony as spoilt child due to the fact that his dad was rich. They believed him to have a sheltered childhood and that he got everything he ever wanted and that Tony had never experienced any hardships until Afghanistan. That's how Steve viewed him until the incident in the gym...

He admits that he was a dick when Tony took Natasha down that fast but his 1940's persona had stepped in at the sight of Natasha on the floor, struggling to get her breathing under control again. He immediately forgot that Natasha was a highly trained ex-assassin and that she could handle herself in more ways than one. Although, he was reminded of that when Tony fled the gym without a backward glance...

When the genius collapsed on the floor, screaming his father's name and begging him to stop, begging for more time and thrashing around, trying to get away from the pain that the memory was inflicting on him, Steve had his first smack of reality that Tony Stark was not all that he seemed. The smack had hurt and it left Steve awake throughout the night, thinking of his old friend and what he had done to his son...

The second smack of reality was when he saw Tony in the kitchen. The man hadn't been seen in days and he refused to let Steve or anyone in, not even JARVIS would talk to him! When he saw Tony, he was talking to Thor, a tripped shirt in one hand, completely ruined with large tears and stains, and a glass of orange juice in the other. From Steve's angle, he could see dark bags under the genius' eyes which suggested his lack of sleep and he caught a full view of his back... Oh, God, his back... It was covered with scars, all of them were old and were long, thin lines down his back and around his shoulders. Steve didn't have to wonder what Howard did to his boy to make him react as he did in the gym anymore...

After that, Steve had been constantly trying to pull him aside and apologise for his stupidity and how he treated him but it looked like their resident billionaire didn't want to hear it, acting as his old joyful self.

Since, Steve couldn't get him alone in the day, he tried to catch him at night, hoping against hope that Tony would stumble into the kitchen on his way to bed after loosing track of time in his lab - but luck hadn't really been going his way lately...

With a sigh, Steve turned around, intending to head to his room but when he did, he got the scare of his life that would have giving him a heart attack if he was an old man...

As he breathed through his fright, Natasha stood there, the darkness hanging around her like a black cloak and pulled shadows along her face, making her glare seem like something from a horror movie.

Ignoring the small, dark and intimidating figure, Steve quickly got a hand towel and wiped off all the water he'd thrown over himself when he jumped ten feet in the air.

Once he was finished rigging his shirt out, Steve tried to send Natasha (who had yet to move) a polite smile, although, it might had looked more terrified than polite, "H-Hey, Natasha. Wh-What are you doing up?"

It was at that point that the spy finally moved to sit down on the breakfast bar, her eyes never leaving his as they bore into his soul, which made him shift and look away from the woman uncomfortably. He felt like when he was in trouble with his mother... only this was ten times worse...

"We need to talk..." she stated in such a cold tone that it sent shivers up his spine.

She stared at him until he finally got the message and hurried to sit down opposite her. It was a few minutes of her staring at him with a dark expression when she finally began to talk, "Everyone believed that Stark was a selfish, egoistic, bastard. Even me, when I wrote up those reports about him." She started, but glared at Steve even harder when he opened his mouth in interrupt but he wisely closed it, "I know now that what he shows to others is basically his own inside joke but just because he's not how you thought he was before does not mean that he is willing to forget with just an apology..."

The woman finished off with a growl so low that Steve thought that she was about to leap over the counter and try to kill him.

With fear coursing through his system, Steve quickly replied with, "I know this. I was wrong about him and I judged him on what others thought about him. I'm trying to make up for it but he doesn't want to know!" he was desperate to keep his life for a little longer.

Slowly, Natasha leaned forward, cold eyes staring into his, "If you want to make up for how much of an asshole you acted then maybe you should try to make it up to him on his grounds instead of your own." At Steve's confused frown, she sighed and carried on, "He doesn't want to be alone with you because he doesn't feel comfortable with you, so why don't you just hang around him with the rest of us, stop trying to pick him out?"

Nodding, Steve thought it over in his head and found that it made a lot of sense. They both got up from the breakfast bar and Steve watched her walk away, more relaxed now that he had a little something to go on.

However, his shoulders instantly tensed up again when Natasha looked over her shoulders giving him a glare that was even worse than the one before, "If you bring up his breakdown in the gym again, I'll kill you."

With that last comment, she merged with the shadows around her, leaving Steve shaken in the kitchen, completely scared out of his wits...

Well, if there was one thing for sure, he wasn't going to try and verbally apologise to Stark anymore...

 

\----------

 

When the team had first moved into the Tower, they all had an odd movie together and it was just something that happened now and then. It would be something like Clint was watching a movie and when someone walked by, they would get dragged into it and the number of people would increase little by little.

Movies seemed to become a more stronger activity among them and it became even more so when Natasha and Tony would watch movies together. It was then that Movie Night was officially born!

It was once a week, every Thursday night, that the team got together and watched a movie of someone’s choice. The person to choose the movie would change every week so that everyone got an opportunity to pick a film. Steve tried to make it compulsory to go as it was a great team bonding exercise, even Bruce would emerge from his lab to join in and Thor was always enthusiastic to join in on any 'Midgardian activities'.

The only person that didn't always show up was Tony. In all honesty, it wasn't the genius' fault. He had a lot of work to do unlike all the other members of the team and had deadlines to meet and paperwork to complete - it didn't matter how many people thought he skipped out of paperwork, he actually did it. Pepper would most likely kill him otherwise... Whenever he did get cornered into watching one of the movies, he always brought the stack of paperwork he was going through at the time and do it while the movie was on.

However, it was apparently Tony's turn to pick a movie so he couldn't skip out on it like usual.

He didn't actually know that it was his turn until it was too late...

Like every other Thursday night, Tony was going through some of the updates in his lab, paperwork by his side when he heard a small noise from above him. Before he could really look up, the ceiling vent jerked wide open and something small and silver landed on the floor. It wasn't long before Tony found out exactly what it was. Smoke began to leak from the device and it smelled so bad that Tony thought that something had died in his lab - and hadn't been found for years as it decomposed.

In a hurry, Tony ran out of his lab, sleeve placed over his mouth and nose and then he quickly commanded JARVIS to filter the lab and seal the doors, he did not want to smell that again.

It was less than a minute later that someone picked him up and throw his whole body over their shoulder, his legs made immobile by strong arms pinning them to a well muscled chest.

"I am sorry, my friend," came Thor's accented voice from the person holding him, "But Lady Natasha demanded I do so."

Tony could only groan. He stopped struggling against the godly hold Thor had on his legs - it was useless to fight against him anyway without his suit on - and let himself be carried to the communal floor living room where the rest of the team were.

As soon as Thor set Tony down, he looked towards the spy duo and found Clint grinning his ass off and Natasha's small smile that basically screamed 'in your face!'.

Sighing, Tony let his shoulders drop in relief as he suggested, "Lord of the Rings?"

At everyones collective nods, they all settled down and JARVIS played the movie. The movie was one of Tony's favourites, he appreciated all the weapons that didn't have a huge damage quality and the humour between the characters. Yeah, it was a long ass film but the build up was what Tony loved most, and the audience having to wait for the information that was being given to them.

Distantly, Tony remembered when Jarvis, the human Jarvis, had given him the book when he'd come out of a long day from working with his Dad. The book had been long but he'd been captivated and had gotten lost in the fantasy that was so different from the reality he was forced to live in.

As the night progressed, Tony found that he was having a good time. They had interrupted the movie several times, Clint cheering when Legolas appeared on screen with his bow and arrow and he pulled out his own, from god knows where, and accidentally fired one at the wall behind the tv. It was no surprise that the weapon was taken off of him for the rest of the night. They also had to pause several times to answer some of the Captain's questions, as well as Thor's. Bruce had to fill the popcorn bowl twice half way through the film and, much to his amusement, Tony caught him mouthing the lines a couple of times as well.

All in all, it was a good night. Tony wouldn't say that he'd be thankful that Clint threw a stink bomb in his lab, or that Thor kidnapped him after it, but he was happy to be there with the team for that night, instead of shut in his lab.

Once the film was over, Steve seemed to blink out of his trance and looked around him to find that all of his team mates had fallen asleep through different points of the movie. Looking around the dimly lit room, Steve found that Clint was fast asleep on the floor, head cushioned in one of the living room pillows and Thor draped over the sofa above him, face peaceful in his sleep and looking childish as he snuggled into the pillow he had in his clutches. Bruce was fast asleep in the arm chair, glasses pushed up as bit and his cheek squished by his hand propping him up.

When he looked at Tony, he found the genius fast asleep as well. Steve would have guessed that Tony was one of the first to drop off to sleep, the dark circles under his eyes more noticeable with the angle of the light from the tv. His breathing was soft and quiet, it was more shallow than Steve would have expected but he brushed it off to a normal thing that Tony did while sleeping. His dark hair was a mess, sticking up in different directions and a bit falling in his face instead of swept back in his usual style. His cheek pressed up against Natasha's shoulder and his arm hung loosely around the spy's middle, like he was hugging a large teddy bear, twitching every now and then (even in his sleep the man never stopped moving). Looking closer, Steve could see the man's eye-lashes, dark and full, brushing lightly over his cheeks and the couldn't help but note that his left eye-brow twitch slightly in his sleep. He looked peaceful, like he never experienced a life time of horror, his face was smooth and he looked a lot younger asleep than he did awake. In all, Steve could only think that the man looked cute.

Wait...

...Cute?

Blood quickly flooded to his face, and Steve didn’t need a mirror to show him how red his face was. His eyes quickly darted to Natasha but, to his surprise, she wasn't asleep. She stared right back at him, an evil grin on her face and a knowing look in her eyes that only made Steve's cheeks burn hotter than before.

He was doomed...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes! I love writing about Steve being really awkward and the relationship between Tony and the team!  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!  
> Extra long chapter coming up next!


	5. Discovered secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! This is the next chapter, it’s a little bit longer that the rest of the chapters (which I think you’d be happy about) and I’m happy to say that this story is close to ending! (Got loads of more things to do and stuff).
> 
> Anyways… Here it is! Chapter 5!!

Peter Parker was a very cautious person, even more so after his little... incident with a spider. He constantly hacked servers to delete evidence of Spider-Man turning into Peter Parter, and vice-versa, when he was too tired or injured from a fight to properly check or if it was a matter of life and death... Which it usually was... He made sure that his Aunt was happy and that she was safe from everything that he could possibly protect her from. Even before he got his powers, he checked over his shoulder more times than necessary when he walked alone.

On second thought... cautious was putting it lightly, outright paranoid was his problem. But he guessed that his times of paranoia was well suited for the... new hobby he did.

Knowing that he'd been extra carful in his crime fighting, he didn't expect anyone to spot him from the crowd. Why would he anyway? He's been invisible for most of his life so why would that change now?

However, his wall of security and carefulness came crumbling down when Mr.Stark called him up to his private lab and instantly pegged the teen as the crime fighting web-head that was (apparently) a local nuisance to some certain brands of news papers (cough cough Daily Bugle).

Peter had tried to deny it at first, obviously, but then the famous genius/billionaire/superhero started to talk to his ceiling about getting Peter's measurements and firing off rapid questions at Peter, only to answer for him before Peter could get in a single word. If Peter had been less in shock, he didn't know whether he'd flip out about Mr.Stark figuring out his secret identity or gaping in awe and interest when holograms started to appear and the ceiling started to talk back in a posh British accent!

When Mr.Stark had asked him if he wanted the new armour reinforced, super light and super flexible Spider-Man suit to be manufactured, all Peter could do was nod his head with his mouth gaping open, probably catching flies in the process. Later, Peter felt like he wanted to cry at his reaction to Mr.Stark! Tony Stark had been a serious roll-model in his life and he could relate to the man on an intelligence level and had always wanted to work for a company like Stark Industries. When the man came back a superhero and owning up to damage that wasn't even his own fault, Peter found himself wanting to desperately meet said genius for years!

When he came out of the building in the late after noon, Peter had gone through several of Mr.Stark's projects that he wanted Peter's input with and had given Peter his own work space full of holograms and screens all around for Peter to develop his own ideas and such. It was like a superior tech playground and Peter had loved every minute of it. Peter left the building with a threat for Peter to come back next week or Mr.Stark himself would go to his own house to pick him up, knowing that his Aunt May to tell him all kinds of 'interesting' stories about Peter and his childhood… The horror…

It was no surprise that Peter went home with a new suit and a growing pit of worry in his chest.

The next week, Peter turned up to the Tower and was almost instantly dragged away to Tony's private floors, which was kind of what Peter expected. What he didn't expect was to be hanging around The friggin' Avengers for a day!!

It was another day of Tony and Peter in his lab and they were just about to finish up...

"Nice. Soft Science isn't really my thing but even I can tell that that's some good stuff. I think you and Bruce-y might have a bromance over this kind of stuff, he's gonna love you..." Mr.Stark (or 'Tony' as he keeps on reminding Peter), trailed off as he backed away from Peter's screen, different equations and notes jotted all over it.

It was only a second later that Peter suddenly caught something that Tony said, "Wait, wait," he started, excitement and hope building up in his chest, "Do you mean, Bruce Banner? Isn't his research based mostly gamma radiation? I didn't think he'd be interested in biology."

Surprisingly, Tony barks out a laugh and continues with a large smile that Peter can't help but return a little, "Oh, Bruce-y has a thing for any kind of science. He's practically a medical doctor and, as much as he's a genius in radiation, he practices biology more so now after the Hulk," Tony informs, his wide smile going smaller but seemed more genuine than the one before.

It was just then that the glass-panel-doors separated, like a hidden door on a flat surface, and in walked a red-headed woman. At first glance, no one would think anything of the woman, she was small and had large curls in her short hair framing the beautifully soft features of her face. She strode into the lab like she had every right to be there and Peter would of thought the woman was his type if she had been a little closer to his age group, but when she looked at him, he knew instantly that he would want nothing relationship wise to do with the woman. Her eyes were jade green and sharp when she scanned the room and Peter couldn't help tense in his stool seat when her eyes landed on him. Intimidatingly green eyes scrutinising him and storing every feature of him into a mental folder; Peter had no doubt she would analyse it thoroughly later on.

It was barely a few minutes that she had entered the room and stared Peter down like she could see his soul before she looked at Tony, who's only indication of knowing she was there was a quirk of his lips and a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, as he read over some information on his screen. It wasn't hard to see that they had something between them, romantic or otherwise, as her dangerously hard eyes softened ever so slightly (barely noticeable, really) and her face took on a look of something close to fondness.

After a couple of silent minutes of Tony rapidly tapping on his screen, he pushed them away and turned a bright, warm smile to greet the woman, "What brings you down to the Man Cave?"

A small twitch of the woman's lips was the only thing to give away her amusement, (if Peter hadn't caught it, he would have thought she was about to kill the genius billionaire), "It's hardly a 'Man Cave' Tony, a 'Nerd Cave' would be the correct definition for it."

Tony gave a pained gasp and clenched a hand over his heart in his 'pain', "JARVIS!" he yelled at the ceiling, "What's the Spider trying to say about my wondrous Man Cave!?"

"I believe that she is pointing out your incorrect term for your work space and implying that your abundance of masculinity is not as clear as you imagined it to be." Came the clear British voice from the ceiling and once again, Peter was completely floored that an AI could sound so fond towards it's creator.

Glaring at the ceiling for a few seconds, Tony could only grumble something about selling the AI to a local college before he turned to the woman once again. His glare was still prominent when he introduced the two by their given names and their relation to Tony but the frown receded when he asked, "What's up then?"

With a small sigh, _The freaking Avenger_ , _Black Widow_ , squared her feet and put her hands behind her back, elbows out and face stern with determination, "I've been tasked to escort you to movie night so you can't back out of this one for your work." she informed, voice low and intimidating as she glared at genius, just daring him to try and back out of it.

Tony gave a sigh of his own before he motioned for JARVIS to put everything on pause and picked up Peter's back. However, instead of giving the bag back to Peter, Tony walked by the teenager and out the room, Black Widow raising one perfectly shaped eye-brow at Peter before she turned on her heels to follow.

"W-Wait! What are you doing?! I need to go home, Mr.Stark!" Peter raised his voice in desperation, eyes pleading for his beloved laptop in his bag to be safely and quickly returned to him.

Tony only grinned at him in turn before they all jumped into the elevator, the lift going up a few floors instead of down, "You're staying over tonight!" Apparently, Tony had contacted his Aunt and she agreed for him to stay over for the night. He really shouldn’t have been so surprised…

And that was how Peter was forced into going to a superhero slumber party... It had been absolutely crazy from the get go! When Peter had first entered the room, full of the Avengers, he found that they were all, sans Tony and Natasha, in their own pyjama merchandise. They all stared at him for a moment before they kind of all reacted at once: Captain America was asking him if his parents knew where he was and if he was lost; Hawkeye was asking him a million questions on different tv shows and movies and asked him if he personally liked the colour purple; Bruce just looked nervous and gave Peter a small wave when they made eye contact for a second; Thor had physically picked him up and sat him down on the cool leather sofa next to him and started to talk loudly about something called a Frost Giant and that he had beat them all up...

It was all very confusing and even while the movie was on, the Avengers seemed to just discuss what was happening, cursing each other for not loving a certain character more than the other. Then, when they all grew too transfixed by the movie, they calmed down and dropped off to sleep one by one until he was asleep himself.

However, throughout the whole thing, Peter couldn't help but notice the way Captain Rogers looked and reacted to Tony. The man's eyes would travel to find the billionaire in the room whenever he heard the man's laughter; his eyes seemed to linger on the man with such longing that Peter felt like he was in some corny love movie. He even saw Tony glance at the muscle bound Captain once or twice, glances fleeting and almost shy.

At the time, Peter had only brushed it off but now, he couldn't help but shake his head in wonderment of how they where not together already.

Whatever. It wasn't any of his business anyway and he had problems of his own to deal with...

 

\----------

 

It was a few of weeks after Tony had hired Peter Parker as his young apprentice, (not that the kid really knew yet but he'd tell him in a few years or so...) and everything was going surprisingly well. The members of the team seem to be more likeable towards him, now that they've gotten to know him and they did small things together like movies and weekly dinners. Tony was starting to genuinely enjoy their company. His spirit ballet teacher, Mary, was starting to become increasingly impressed with Tony's progress and even Nat was starting to nod in approval now that he had been taught a bit more of the art. At last, he and Steve had been getting along better lately and he seemed to stop looking like he was about to trap him in a corner and interrogate him about what happened. It only made sense that it would come crashing down at any moments notice...

And how did this wonderful streak of a comfortable and relatively normal life style end, you say? Well, it ended with a stupid crazy and delusional Nazi organisation that didn't know they died out seventy years ago! It was a little of an understatement that Steve was a little less than happy about it...

The day had gone on as usual and Peter had even come out of the lab to meet and greet everyone again, still a little shy about the whole superhero ordeal but he was defiantly getting more comfortable with them, and sat down in the living room to watch some tv with everyone else. It was a lazy day and Thor had come for a visit after spending so much time with Jane Foster (she had actually kicked him out for getting underfoot but the god refused to admit that) and had asked Tony to teach him to bake some of the cookies Ben had showed him to make.

They were about half an hour into their session and they were both covered nearly head to toe in white flour and sugar when the Avengers alarm went off. Finding no time for a shower, both of them turned off the oven with the cookies still baking in them and ran off to get their relative suits for battle, trying to ruffle flour out of their hair as they did so - Tony was just thankful that his bodily kitchen mess was hidden under his suit...

As they all threw themselves valiantly into battle, the small team of six different individuals were nearly overwhelmed with the swarm of deadly robots that were trying to kill everyone and everything in their path. Barely fifteen minutes into their fight, Tony had found a weakness in the robots so they were able to disassemble the robots easier. But the problem wasn't killing the robots but the sheer number of them, it was like there was a million of them being produced every minute and wave after wave was getting harder and harder to fend off.

"Jesus Christ! This is worse than Vanko!" Tony shouted frustratedly into his com link as he took out another three robots before he had to blast away from one that had freaking _chainsaws_ for arms!

No one really bothered to answer him, too busy with their own swarm of killer robots to respond and not get killed through the distraction. It wasn't long before the good Captain was giving out new orders and strategies, "Hawkeye, Widow, I need you two near the east side of central park. Thor, do you think you can fry all of these at once?" "Nay, Captain, they are not all connected to kill all at once" "Okay, I need you to keep taking out as many as you can with Hulk. Tony I need you to head to get to Second street, a road has collapsed on a train and the people are trapped. Go help them. I'll carry on clearing the area around here. Roger?"

"Roger." came all of their voices over the shared com link and they set out to do their assigned tasks, Tony not even giving his usual complaint about being ordered about due to how tried he was. They had been at this for what seemed like hours!

Arriving at the caved in road, Tony set out to delicately removing some the the concrete that had fallen on the broken train and on the tracks below that he could vaguely see and taking care not to remove anything that would cause more of the concrete to fall. Once that was done, Tony set to settling the people inside and telling them to get back before he started to laser cut off the side of the train to get the people out. Slowly but surely, Tony got all the passengers out of the train and directed them to the safety areas.

"Help!" someone screamed, voice echoing and barely there, Tony didn't think he'd have noticed the cry for help if he wasn't in the suit. He tracked the sound of distress from further inside the tunnel and landed on the side wall of the train where it had been knocked over. The frame was bent and damaged beyond repair and the train gave a moan at the weight of the suit.

He then turned on his repulsers bright enough to be a good light for the lone passenger to see and be guided to, "Hello?" he called but only get another yell of plea instead, sounding even more distressed than the last.

"JARVIS, scan for heat signature of a human base." Tony commanded firmly and switched to his com link to speak to the others, "Hey, Cap nearly done here, just got to get one more person out of here, awaiting further orders after."

"Roger that," Came Steve's steady and determined voice, "We need you back in air support with Thor after you're done."

With a small nod, Tony switched back to his task at hand and started scanning for the person in distress but the scans came back negative, making in frown in confusion. He lead on, knowing that he couldn't just leave without explicitly knowing that no one was there.

Towards the end of the train cart, Tony found that the pleas had gotten louder and without waisting any time, Tony kicked down the metal door of the crumpled and ruined train. Stepping out into the darkness of the tunnel, the light of his repulsers making the shadows retreat. He stopped when it landed on a small out of date stereo cranked up to the highest volume. With a frown, Tony stepped over and turned the thing off, making the tunnel go deafly silent with the sudden absence of noise.

With a small huff, Tony made to turn away and started to connect to the com link, "Okay, all done here. It was just a stereo--" he suddenly cut himself off when all that came back was the eery white noise of static in the coms.

In that moment, Something loud and screeching came from behind him, the noise seemed to echo inside his head, his hands clamping over his ears on instinct, but couldn't drown it out from inside the suit.

"JARVIS," Tony shouted, trying to be heard over the noise, "Turn it off!!"

But the noise didn't stop, it only seemed to intensify and- God! The pain! The pain was becoming almost blinding and he dropped his his knee, clutching his armour clad head. In only a couple of seconds, the noise went from blinding pain to agonising. Tears started to involuntarily gather in the corners of his eyes and his titanium gold alloy fingers managed to pry his helmet off so he could actually get to covering his ears.

However, in that moment, the noise stopped and Tony allowed his shoulders to slump slightly in relief. His ears rang and everything around him was muffled and fuzzy as he tried to get his breathing under control; he didn't hear the footsteps coming up from behind him until it was too late. A sharp prick on his neck and his world was fading in a matter of seconds...

 

\----------

 

When he came to, he was faced with a bright light all around him and a small sound of ringing still present in his ear. He gave a small wince and tried to slam his eyes closed but the light was too bright even then.

Once he was able to see properly, he squinted about but could only groan when he found that he was in a box room with white walls and hanging lights on the too high ceiling above him. When he became more aware, he found that he was tied to a chair, legs tied down and hands cuffed behind his back, too tough to give way and he could feel the sharp metal edges cutting into his wrists with every slight shift.

Great. Kidnapping...

It wasn't long before Tony heard the creek of old hinges and a heavy door opening behind him. Footsteps soon followed and a woman came from behind, hands held behind her back, blond hair scraped back into a business-like bun and her blue eyes were like piercing needles into his own. Tony knew that a few months ago, he would have compared this woman to Natasha but now, he could see that they were anything but similar.

"Anthony Stark," The woman said in a crisp and slightly accented tone, "A pleasure to meet you."

Tony gave a smile, full of teeth and cold eyes as he said in a falsely cheery tone, "Sorry, can't say the same about you. And you are..."

The blond smiled, twisting her face into something dark before she said, "HYDRA."

With that one word, about a million thoughts and feelings ran through Tony's entire being, the most prominent was the bone chilling dread that had sunk into his stomach, but he kept his face neutral and unaffected despite his rising panic. This also got his desired response from the woman who had obviously expected some great reaction and the scowl on her face was more satisfying than anything else.

There was a small silence between them where the woman just scowled and Tony tried his damned best not to laugh at the woman. If he were to laugh in this type of situation, he would surely die by the hand of this woman...

Just then, a shadow passed behind the woman and all traces of his amusement was wiped from his face as his eyes went to the presence behind the woman. The shadow was dark and disfigured with the outline of a human body that radiated a twisted darkness within. Its face was shadowed into a cruel grin that promised pain and death to all within its reach and when it looked at Tony, all he could see was blood; blood of people long ago, children, fathers, mothers and even elderly. There was so much blood on the spirit (as Tony figured it could hardly be anything else) that it seemed to drip off of its form and a puddle started to grow beneath its feet like a growing shadow. The dark aura touched Tony like cold and clammy hands and he instantly felt sick and violated - it felt like he was being raped...

By the time Tony was able to 'push' the twisted spirit away, he was sweating and panting from the effort, his body shivering from such a gross violation. When he looked up, it was only to see the blond bitch smiling like she had won some great victory.

"So," she started, a pleased smile and a knowing look spreading slowly over her face, "It's true..."

Glaring (Tony was in no mood for games, especially after _that_ ), Tony tried to stop shivering but only managed to stop the major quakes of his body as minor ones still crawled over his skin, "What is?"

The woman only smiled before she stepped closer to him, her eyes seemed bright with her inner joy, and brushed her slim, cold fingers over his cheek. Tony had to try desperately not to flinch away, thinking that it would be pointless as he had no place to escape to, "That the great Antony Stark can see ghosts and spirits, an invisible plane that holds power that we cannot begin to discover due to our inability to. But now, we have you."

The pool of dread had gotten heavier and heavier while the woman monologued for a bit, his stomach turning inside out at the thought of the woman possibly knowing about him, but on the outside, his face expressed incredulousness and confusion, "Do you hear yourself? Spirits? Ghosts? You've got to be kidding me... I am a man of science not science fiction. There's no such thing as spirits or ghosts and this guy that you're getting this information from? Yeah, I think you should fire him because he's obviously smoked something on the job."

Tony smirked at the woman, his bravo shining through as he denied what he and only a few choice others should only know. However, despite his attempts, the woman did not faze from her joyous expression. Her slight fingers dug into his chin, nails threatening to draw blood and her blue eyes taking on a manic view as she continued to smile at him.

"Do not try to play me, Mr.Stark," she said, voice low but her face still pulled into a wide smile, "I've known for a while now and I've heard you admit it your self." At Tony's confused frown, the woman smiled further and continued, "Cut off one head and two shall take its place. There are many people in this world that are willing to plant certain things when tempted with the right things. I have recordings Mr.Stark, lots of recordings..."

Gritting his teeth Tony gave the woman in front of him (who had clearly never heard of personal space) his best glare, "I don't know what you are talking about." he still denied, panic and anger taking over and all he could think was about getting away from the dark presence who's shadow was starting to reach towards Tony and the unaware woman in agonisingly slow movements.

"Yes. You. Do." The woman borderline shouted before she took a deep breath, visibly calming herself, and stepped back from Tony a little bit, "I never could see them but my sister could hear them sometimes as whispers in the back of her head. When we tested her, we were able to see that her power could be amplified and create a power so much more than seeing and hearing the dead. Unfortunately, she died with the intense training that she had to do to get as far as she did and even more so, she was our only test subject and the operation powered down nearly immediately. Until I found you." The woman ended with a bright smile, truly pleased with herself and what she had done.

_I'm gonna die by the hands of a psychopath_ , Tony thought grimly and then he went over what he just told her and when he processed it, he didn’t even try to hide his disgust, "You tested on your _own_ _sister_?"

"It was a necessary evil and if it had worked, she would have been like a god among mortals with all the power of the spirits." The woman said, smiling fondly at the memory like it was a special bonding thing with her sister.

"There is no power!" Tony finally snapped, the woman's delusional speech irritating him to no end, "There is nothing but talking to them and helping them move on, that's all you can do! The only power that would come with it was if you were a mutant that specialised in absorbing energy! You killed your sister for nothing!" Tony was a little afraid now, not about the woman, no, (Tony had to deal with over enthusiastic fan-girls all the time and they could get very violent very fast...) but the shadowed spirit in the room was getting closer and the presence was baring down on him even harder than before. A cold sweat had started to break out on his skin and his tremors had escalated to full body shutters once again. Panic was starting to well up inside him and Tony could feel his emotions raging inside him, slowly loosing control in his panic and desperation to get away. To escape.

The woman only smiled, on anyone else, the smile would look sweet, maybe fond on some level but with this woman, it was like she saw Tony as a misunderstanding child, like when they grew up, they would understand. She smiled like it was for the best.

"This is supposed to be one of the most haunted rooms in the base, no one likes being here for long as they feel like they're being watched, touched by a cold hand... By the way you're reacting, I bet it's ten times worse." she then bent down to his level and had a completely earnest look on her face as she said, "With time, you'll come around Mr.Stark." she then patted him on the knee and walked out of the room, door clanking shut behind her.

Tony took a shuddering breath as the dark spirit's aura seemed to be trying to suffocate him.

After only a few more minutes, the spirit was too much for him and he passed out, the shadows seeming to envelope him as he finally gave into unconsciousness...

 

\----------

  

When Tony next woke up, he found himself in a different environment entirely. Instead of the hard back chair and the white sterile walls that had surrounded his vision, he was met with a soft bed beneath him and a dozen blankets pilled on top, tucked in at all sides and soft cream walls all around him, without a single speck of dirt to be seen. Tony further relaxed when the didn't feel the pin pricking presence of the dark spirit and that there was no sign of the crazy blond woman.

His nose was filled with a strong scent that could only belong to the inside of a hospital and the sound of echoing nothings was replaced with an annoying, constant beeping sound in his ear… _This_ is why he hated hospitals!

That could mean one of two things: either, he was saved and brought to SHIELD's medical floor or (and that was a big 'or'), he'd been kidnapped by some other people who think that special treatment will convince him to do what they want.

Option number one become more plausible when he spotted the mountains of 'get well soon' cards, presents and balloons, he could also see one that said, 'back to work soon!' on the front... Most likely Pepper's card... But the real clincher was Steve Rogers sitting by his bed...

The American Icon was sat in the only chair in the room and was fast asleep, his mouth hung open, small snores sounding from the Good Captain, and his hair a little mussed. Leaning closer, Tony could see that his blond hair was slightly greasy and that he had dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. How long had the Captain been there? And why was he there?

Just as he was coming up with a whole list of questions, the door gently swung open and none other than Natasha appeared from the entry way, holding a small teddy bear with hearts on it's paws and some writing on it that Tony couldn't read from that far away. When she saw him trying to sit up as he sent her a small smile, her eyes seemed to go softer and her shoulders sagged ever so slightly, relief coming off of her in waves.

"Hey." he tried to greet but his throat was so dry that it came out in a horrible rasp, that made him cringe and wince in pain.

Immediately, she walked over and held a cup of cold water against his lips until he took it himself and downed the whole thing. Feeling the water's coolness do wonders with his parched throat, Tony attempted again, “Hey. How long was I out?"

"Four days. We found you after a day when Fury could finally pick up the chip he planted in your suit. You were unconscious in a creepy room and you hadn't woken up since then," she gestured her hand to Steve and said, "He hasn't left your side since we found you."

"Is that why he stinks?" Tony asked, a familiar grin coming to his face along with his usual bravo but it didn't seem to be working as Natasha only narrowed her eyes more.

"What happened down there anyway?" Caution and curiosity mixed in with her tone as she glared at him, daring him to deny that anything was wrong with him, "Tell me. Please..."

Looking away, Tony took a deep breath as he thought of the room he was trapped in and who he was trapped with. An involuntary shudder made it through his entire being at just the thought of the evil spirit but he answered her question nonetheless, "I'm not sure to be honest but this woman worked in a division for HYDRA and she new about my... extra sense. I don't know how, or particularly why, as I usually keep that information under lock and key, but she thought that with the ability that maybe there would be some kind of power with it. She locked me in a room with a spirit. But it was nothing like I had ever felt and... it was dark and twisted and when it touched me, it felt like... some kind of violation. I think I passed out soon after that..."

"And do you?"

Confused, Tony frowned at the red-headed assassin, "Do I what?"

She rolled her eyes in slight exasperation before she asked her question again, "Do you have powers?"

Silence filled the air as Tony processed what he'd been asked and Natasha waited for her answer, "No!" he finally burst out, glaring at the assassin, "I've been seeing then ever since I could remember and in no way, have I developed some kind of superpowers. Seriously, it's ridiculous!"

Natasha was grinning as she watched him rant and rave about how much of an improbability it was to develop super powers from a spirit as twisted as the one he was forced in a room with. Natasha was about to speak over him when the door smashed open, making them jump and Steve to snort awake. Marching into his room was none other than a furious Nick Fury (pun intended), his leather trench coat swishing about behind him dramatically.

A sly grin automatically planted itself on his face as he greeted the already pissed off Director, "Hey Nicky. Jeez, who put salt in your cereal this morning?"

"Do you wanna tell me, Mr.Stark," Fury started, ignoring Tony's question and glared at the hospitalised billionaire with his one eye, "Why I'm only hearing about this 'Spirit Walking’ shit only  _now_?!"

"You talked to Thor, didn't you?" Tony asked with only a hint of exasperation as he grinned at the man who was trying and failing to be intimidating - Tony had zero respect for any authoritative figures in his life and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon...

"Answer the goddamned question Stark." Fury commanded, his voice low and the vain in his head practically bulging.

"Fine, be that way," Tony waved off before his grin completely vanished and a hard look was directed at the Director, "Maybe it was because, it was my business that you didn't have to know about. How do you know about that, by the way?"

"We recovered some footage of the room you were kept in and saw the whole thing. Now tell me what the hell was that all about!" Fury shouted, and Tony winced slightly as his head throbbed with all the yelling.

"You've seen the footage, Nicky, surely you should know." Tony sated with a raise of his eye-brow.

Fury looked from one person to the other, his eye narrowed and his lips pressed into a thin line before he looked back to Tony, his jaw clenching in his obvious frustration, "We aren't done here." he stated before he felt in a flutter of his leather trench coat.

Tony could only huff a laugh, his eyes trained on the angered pirate until he walked passed the window in a huff, his eyes turned back on the other occupants in his room; eyes lingering on the now-wake occupant than the other. Steve was staring right back and looking like he wanted to say something but his eyed kept on shooting to Natasha, a silent plea for something.

Without a word, Natasha left the medical room, leaving the teddy bear she brought with her on Tony's bed, leaving him and Steve alone.

"So..." Tony started awkwardly, his heart hammering in his chest in an almost painful way as he fidgeted nervously on his bed, silently wishing that he wasn't in a white medical nightgown.

"So..." Steve countered, obviously trying to make it the most awkward conversation in history. His face started to turn a shade of bright red in his embarrassment and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

"You need a shower," Tony blurted out and then silently cursed himself for his lack of brain to mouth filter.

"Excuse me?"

"Er... You, er... You should of taken care of yourself than worrying over me." Tony said slowly and carefully, unwilling to piss off the Captain in the way he usually does. God! What was the matter with him?!

Tony looked the other way, unwilling to get a full view of Steve's 'Captain America' scowl that he liked to use so often whenever he thought someone was being rude (mainly Tony). But he startled when he felt a big warm hand on his shoulder and instantly looked up to find that Steve was close, like, really close...

"Er, Steve?" Tony asked, voice unsure and heart fluttering with something Tony couldn't quite describe.

Before, Tony could do anything else, Steve brushed their lips together in a barely there kiss, stunning Tony into a stillness. When he didn't immediately move away, Steve pressed their lips together more firmly, putting his desperation and his relief into the kiss... And then Tony kissed back.

Moving their lips together in a sweet and tender moment was nothing like Tony had every experienced before, his former first kisses filled with alcohol and sexual passion, but when he kissed Steve, all he could feel was love and relief.

It was a few seconds before they pulled back, taking in deep lungfuls of air and gently putting their foreheads together as they looked into each other's eyes, sky blue staring into honey brown.

"I thought I'd never see you again..." Steve breathed, eyes trained on Tony like he was afraid he would disappear into thin air without a trace, "You don't know how much you put me through in that one day you were gone and we couldn't find you. It opened my eyes."

"To what?" Tony asked, voice sounding small and hopeful and Tony knew exactly what he was feeling at that moment which made his chest want to explode.

"To the fact that I've fallen in love with you." Steve admitted, putting it out in the open for the first time since he had fallen for the genius.

"When?"

Steve stopped to consider before a small smile spread over his face and a blush came to his cheeks, "I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, or even the second, but I think it was around the time that Natasha threatened to kill me if I didn't drop what happened in the gym. I stopped thinking about you as a genius billionaire and more as a person. The more I saw you, the more I found small things that I liked about you... The way you brush back your hair when your confused or nervous, the way you bit everything that's in your hands whenever your thinking too hard, the way you smile and look whenever you talk to JARVIS. The list is endless and I've fallen for every single one of your quirks, Tony."

By the end of it, Tony was blushing mad and before he could catch himself, his hand went through his hair in his nervousness. A nervous chuckle came from Tony and his face held a light shade of red as he looked away from the intense blue eyes and brushed his fingers through his hair again, "D-Do you maybe think... er, that we... er..." Tony stuttered, face becoming even more of a brighter shade of red in his own horror that he, the Great Tony Stark, was blushing and stuttering in the presence of Captain America!

The amused smile on Steve's face was more than enough to get Tony's words to shut down completely, "Tony," he started, voice low with amusement but it held an undercurrent of nervousness and uncertainty, "Do you wanna go on a date with me some time?"

With an enthusiastic nod from Tony, they both lent in to give each other a light kiss when something crashed into the room with the ceiling vent, the vent crashing loudly to the floor before none other than Clint Barton swung down from the hole, a joyful smile and his eyes sparkling in amusement, "AW! They finally got together!" he then went to the door and opened it up a crack to fit his head through to shout, "Hey, guys! Come here! They finally did it! The sexual tension at the breakfast bar is finally over!"

With that, Clint shot up into the vents again and the rest of the team filed into the hospital room, talking about Tony's medical treatment and loud exclamations of congratulations on getting together which ultimately ruined the rest of the new couple's mood to do anything else.

As the others were talking and shouting things, Tony lent over to Steve and whispered, "Katniss is so gonna pay for this when I escape from this place."

"I wouldn't expect anything less." The Captain whispered back, a small grin on his face.

Thus concluded the start of a great relationship between the two heroes that none could get between.

They were gonna be great pain in the ass for future super villains to come...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small note: the power thing will be better explained in the next chapter so don’t worry if it’s a little vague about it all…
> 
> More will come soon! Bye for now!


	6. An unwilling holiday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter for this story and I’ve included pictures in this one! Yay!  
> Hope you enjoy and go easy on me about the drawings k? I prefer writing for a reason!

Tony honestly couldn't say why this was his life... But he wasn't really one to complain, especially with his... spiritual ability...

It was only this morning that Tony had woken up from a dreamless and satisfying sleep (one that he could hardly get nowadays with all that the nightmares...) and evidently, he decided to have a lazy day (something also extremely rear).

The New York skyline was full of clear blue skies, a rarity in their fine city, and Tony couldn't find it in himself to live up to his usual eccentric persona with all his inventing and self-seclusion, as Natasha puts it, working in his lab. So, settling down with Steve on the sofa, Tony started to watch all the films that he had been dying to show Steve whenever he had the chance - the man had so much to catch up on, it was a crime how little TV he's watched!

Steve and Tony had entered their four month time frame of being in a loving relationship and Tony could honestly say he's never been happier. Everyday is filled with meaningful glances and lingering touches, all tooth-rotting fluff that Tony always hated on the TV but secretly loved in reality. Steve was the kind of guy that brought Tony his food when he forgot and dragged him back to bed on the second day of no rest and accompanied Tony in his lab, never saying a word as he sketched in his 'secret' note book. The man had endless patience for Tony and he seemed to enjoy Tony being himself, Steve showed absolutely no signs of wanting to change him or manipulate him. Steve was... perfect, pure of heart... Oh, so what?! Tony's a sap when it came to those things!!

Everything had been going well with Peter Parker as well, or Pete as Tony called him. The kid became more and more comfortable as time wore on and when the kid was certain that Tony wouldn't out him as a teenage vigilante, he became more relaxed in the lab and the two would talk about different topics for hours, be it science or otherwise - he even started to willingly join the team for movie nights! It came to a point where Tony was writing up the necessary paper work for Peter and his Aunt to move into the Tower - rent free, of course. Even Spider-Man had come to visit the Avengers Tower from time to time, training with the group or sometimes even going on missions with them. Tony was quite proud to say that his plan was coming along brilliantly!

SI had about a million projects to manufacture and put on the market. New phones and tablets as well as other new house hold appliances that he thought to make and upgrade. He'd even completed half a dozen next season upgrades and had worked on the kinks in his suit to his satisfaction (well, until he thought of something new, that was). Tony had worked and worked himself into exhaustion and, judging by JARVIS and his phone, Tony had slept through a whole day. It was worth it though, he wouldn't have anything to do for a while and had decided that a day with his boyfriend was just what the doctor ordered!

So, as they snuggled down, half way through Lord of the Rings, something  _Obviously_ had to happen. Of course it did! Nothing was ever normal and peaceful in the life of Tony Stark! EVER!! It was getting ridiculous and Tony was starting to think that maybe it was karma or God hating his guts for some reason...

As it turned out, he wasn't far off...

His wonderfully lazy afternoon was ruined by the sudden smothering of the blue sky that was filled with glooming grey clouds within seconds. Minutes later, the god of Thunderer was at his door (or on the roof of his tower) demanding that the team come meet him there.

The whole team had obviously gone to meet their godly friend to see what was wrong, weapons at the ready but not nearly as ready for battle as they would be for a crisis. With the request, Tony had slammed his right arm on the sofa's arm, the right arm of his armour assembling itself around his hand and forearm. Steve had only looked at him incredulously, before shaking his head and running to get his shield, when all Tony did was shrug. The only team member that didn't have a weapon was Bruce, but he could turn into the Hulk with a snap of your fingers so it was fine.

It wasn't long before Thor had whisked them all away, with hardly two words to them, literally, all he said to them was that "All-Father requests your audience". The next thing Tony knew, he was standing on a fucking rainbow bridge, with a city of fucking gold in front of him, and Thor beaming at the gaping group with the excitement of an over-active puppy! If Tony had been more informed about what was going to happen, he would have taken his time to notice the unfamiliar world around him and maybe said a lot of scientific babble that not even Bruce would understand but, as it was, he was still gapping at the city.

Although, his shock only lasted so long...

"Thor! What the fuck?!" Tony all but screamed, distantly taking note that Bruce was starting to do some breathing exercises in the background and Steve's hand violently twitching in what Tony had come to know as Steve's artist's instincts.

But, despite his yelling and ranting state, Thor's smile did not waver, "My friends!" he boomed, gaining the attention of the group, "Allow me to welcome you to Asgard, the Realm Eternal." He finished with a slightly dramatic sweep of his hand to the golden city at large. It was seriously fucking gold! The sun bouncing off of it and everything!

Opening his mouth, Tony goes to yell at the god again but he closes it in order to take a soothing breath. Closing his eyes and rubbing at the distant ache at the corner of his eye that he just _knew_  was an oncoming headache, Tony started again, this time much calmer (more like barely controlled), "Thor," He started, voice tight, "What are we doing here?"

The Thunderer tilted his head in obvious confusion as he took in Tony's irritated form, "I had told you before Heimdall opened the Bifrost and allowed us entry into Asgard," Thor explained as he gestured to a huge man with gold rimmed eyes and golden armour (what was it with all the gold? Okay, he guessed he had no room to talk but his suit was made out of a gold titanium alloy, not _pure fucking gold_!) that Tony had somehow missed and only nodded at the mention of his name, "My Father, the All-Father, demands an audience with my Shield Brothers and Sister from Midgard, I have no understanding as to what his inquiries entail."

And with that, Tony's dull, distant headache, came to the forefront of his mind.

He was just about to begin yelling again when a warm, large and familiar hand landed on his shoulder. Tony's eyes tracked up the arm to meet sky blue, the colour of the Earth's sky on a perfectly lazy, normal day that Tony was so much enjoying just that morning. Allowing himself to be tagged out, Tony walked back to Natasha and pressed his head to her shoulder, her red curls hiding half his face as he buried the other half into her neck, Steve's calming voice washing over Tony like a warm blanket.

Fiddling with his arrows, Clint was crouched down on the edge of the bridge, a contemplative look on his face as he looked over the large city that looked taller than New York's skyscrapers. Then, with haunted eyes, Clint turned to look at Natasha, "Fury's gonna kill us..."

"Yep."

 

\----------

 

An hour or so later, the team was walking through the palace halls of Asgard, taking note on everything that they could. Steve just looked more and more desperate with every delicate carving on the walls that looked to be hand done with several precious jewels encrusted into it, his fingers twitching with the need to jot down every detail of the place into one of his many, many, sketch books. Bruce looked to be doing all kinds of calculations as he stared at everything around him and muttered numerous equations of physics and theories under his breath; his mind in a completely different world. Tony and Clint were quietly joking and laughing at all the guards' ridiculous helmets and coming up with different theories as to weather Thor's helmet was a bull's horns or a centipede's antenna. As he was laughing with Clint however, Tony was getting as many angle pictures as he could with the small earpiece, that was equipped with a camera, for Steve when they get back to Earth. Natasha seemed to be the only vigilant one, eyes roving over every hallway, window and door.

It wasn't long before Thor was pushing them into a large room that was filled with plush royal purple seats in the middle and large cubical-like sections that was cut off with a heavy red velvet curtain. Young girls (or woman that appeared to be young) were standing all over the room, all of them wearing the same white chiffon dress that spilled onto the floor all around them but, somehow, never tripped over as they walked.

"Hey, Buddy," Tony started nervously, dread pooling in his stomach and hoping against hope that he was dead wrong in his suspicions, "What's all this? I thought we were gonna go meet your Dad?"

"Aye, in a matter of time, friend Antony," Thor said with a smile as he clasped a heavy hand on his shoulder, giving Tony a small electric shock that he had grown used to, "I have told many of the deeds that you all have made, to your own Realm and to mine own. My Mother is very excited to finally meet your acquaintance but one must dress in as the habitat's of the Realm deems worthy and so, you will have to wear Asgardian armour when walking through these halls."

Tony said nothing and just looked at Thor as he contemplated the god's answer... And it was surprisingly logical. especially when Thor makes it a point to dress up in normal clothes when around the tower or his 'Lady Jane'.

With a defeated sigh, Tony only nodded, defeat and submission clear in his body language as his shoulders slumped and he dragged his feet slightly when he went to the beautiful women. The women guided him and every other Avenger to their own personal changing room.

As the girls shut the curtains, Tony turned to face them with a serious look as said in his most sternest voice, "Fine, I'll remove my clothes but my pants stay!" He then started to strip off his clothes as fast he could, ready for the embarrassing ordeal to be over. Tony hadn't been dressed since he was four years old, it was kind of embarrassing and unfamiliar to be doing that when he was over 40 years old. He became even more so when the girls' eyes widened at the sight of his scars that littered his back, shoulders and around his Reactor.

When one of them spoke, awe and wonder was dripping from her voice, "You have many honourable battle scars, Man of Iron, I am thrilled that our Prince has someone so experienced fighting as his Shield Brother in Arms."

Tony didn't really have time to reply before he was hustled into leather trousers and brown boots with engraved steel-toe caps. They then clasped a sort of vest top over him, detailed and rich metal on the front, sliver and gold with a hole in the centre, obviously cut to fit his Arc Reactor. Dark red and electric blue material sowed into his sides and a dark collar coming around the hem of the armoured top. But Tony opted to keep the armour that still encased his arm so the girls tied a piece of material, same colour as the material at his sides, at the top of his arm when metal changed to skin. Tony had to admit, he looked kind of cool, even if he didn't favour the way the scarring on his shoulders were exposed for all to see...

When he came out of the dressing room, Tony couldn't hold back his grin as he saw that the others were in a similar state to himself. Natasha wore a dress-like armour with black chiffon hanging over her skirt and trailing over her shoulders. Armour all over her shoulder joints, stomach and metal shin-pads over her legs with her high boots. Clint was dressed in dark purple and black, same layout as Tony's own but different with black tinted metal and silver over his chest and short sleeves covering his shoulders as well as a 'V' neck top. Bruce wore the least amount of armour which was the colour of aluminium and only over his stomach and part of his chest. His clothes best resembled a robe with long handing sleeves and colours of dark and light green with purple mixed in; Tony thought it totally suited his Zen-like personality. Steve... Steve looked damn sexy, if he did say so himself. He had armour all over his arms with strips of silver covering his chest and a darker shade of metal stars melded into the armour, red, white and blue material sown into his sides and a cloth around his wrists.

All Tony could do was whistle, eyes visibly roving over Steve's armoured body and he gave Steve a small wink when he was done appreciating the view. He could only outright laugh when Steve face flushed a dark red, the tips of his ears turning red along with his face.

The team gave a small chuckle at Tony's antics, making the super soldier blush even more and face palm in his obvious embarrassment. Thor moved them along, down more halls that seemed to get larger and larger with the guards around them practically doubling with every step. It wasn't long before, they were all standing in a gold coated room, humungous (and most likely extremely heavy) front doors that were clearly made with solid gold with a big tree engraved in the front and rich jewels embedded in the door, closing loudly behind them. At the centre of the golden hall, with white marble pillars at the right side of them, there were two gigantic thrones.

Sat upon the thrones were two figures, who were obviously the famous Odin and Frigga, Thor's Mother and Father and rulers of all of Asgard.

As they walked further in, Thor dropped down to his knee, his head bowed in respect, "Mother, Father," he greeted with the most serious voice Tony had ever heard him speak in, "I have brought my comrades from Midgard with me, as you requested."

Odin nodded, his mouth set in a thin line and his head held higher than anyone else's as he spoke to his son but Tony could see a small spark of warmth in the man's eyes as he spoke to his son, "Well, done, my son. I must thank you for completing so soon," The man, or god, or whatever, turned towards the human group, old eyes critical as he scanned over each and every one of them, his eyes lingering on Tony and the mass of scarring on his shoulders, "Welcome. I am Odin, the All-Father and my wife, Queen Frigga. We hope your stay with us is most divine."

That was apparently all he wanted to say as he sat back down on his golden chair (and they say Tony had a thing for gold...) and observed. Frigga stepped down from her throne, her silk dress elegantly dancing over the steps as she descended down, a warm smile on her face that reached all the way to her eyes, "I am sorry to request you all on so short notice but we are to believe that a powerful Spirit Walker lie in your ranks," with that, her eyes scanned each of them, the warm blue going slightly colder in her calculated expression, but they instantly warmed again when her eyes caught Tony's own, "Ah," she started softly, amusement flashing in her eyes, "So, you are the great Man of Iron that my Thor has told so about with much enthusiasm," her eyes flicked to his visible scars, and his glowing chest, before going back to his eyes, her own slightly sadder, "And his tales appear to be accurate when coming to your story of woe..."

Tony raised his eye brows at that and fought to keep his arms from crossing over his chest to hide his Arc Reactor; eyes landing on a slightly shifting Thor, who had now stood up, and was obviously looking everywhere around the room but at Tony... "My 'story of woe' huh?" Tony said in a voice portrayed his obvious amusement, "Excuse me, your Majesty," Tony said humbly as he turned back to the Queen of Asgard, "I was not aware that Thor was telling you stories of myself and my comrades, all good things, I hope. My I ask why we have been summoned here? As much as your home is grand and impressive, Thor did not relieve much of why you have need of me."

The warm smile that was directed at Tony was warm and genuine from the Queen and from behind her, they could all see Odin nod his head in approval of Tony's attitude and respectful conversation with his wife. The others were just staring at him in utter confusion and astonishment, having thought that Tony would offend the King and Queen with the first word he said. He restrained himself from laughing at their faces and at the fact that he and the Queen of England were like pen-pals and so knew when to be respectful and when to be himself.

"Thor," Came the stern voice that all mothers could use on their children, "I believe you have an apology to make to your mortal friends. I taught you better manners than to take our guests with little to no explanation or choice." her smile was still in place but the side look she gave Thor was a promise of reeducation that made the Thunderer shift his feet uncomfortably as he looked down. Her smile returned full force, with warm eyes, as she turned back to Tony, "I thank you for your politeness in our halls, Spirit Walker, and I, as said, request your help. Our youngest son, sickly and unwell, once walked these halls in along with Thor and Loki. Balder passed at a young age but his chambers remain occupied. Strange energy, that I cannot understand, but his energy, I sense, all the same. I believe he's still with us and I ask you to end the suffering that it brings him by seeing and not being seen..." The Queen finished with more of a sad smile than the warm one she started with, past pain and past sorrow creeping into her eyes...

"Your Majesty," Tony interrupted before she could delve deeper into memories that were obviously painful to her (Tony didn't know what he should do if a woman cried, let alone a Queen of Asgard!), “There's a reason your son lingers and before I speak with him, I don't know what it'll be but I'll try as you requested."

After that, Tony expected to be dismissed and taken to the kid's room straight away. What he did not expect was to be captured in a bone crushing hug by the god of Thunder himself, figures that the armour wouldn't help with all the crushing...

"Friend, Antony!" Thor exclaimed in happiness, as he held Tony off of the floor and damn near crushed his spleen, "You are truly kind for this selfless deed! Asgard will commend you and sing songs of the mortal Spirit Walker that saved our pure of heart Balder!"

"Thor," Tony wheezed, "Thor, put me down!"

Dimly, Tony was aware that other commotion was going on, the rest of the team telling Thor that Tony wasn't a teddy bear and he wasn't a god so he couldn't be hugged like one, while the Queen of Asgard was widely smiling that them, laughter in her eyes.

The one to actually get Thor to release him was, in fact, Odin, "Thor." was all it took for Thor to finally release him and awkwardly clasp in him the shoulder. Thor gave him a sheepish grin, the smile straining all the more as Tony glared at him through his attempt to catch his breath.

"Thor will take you to your chambers when evening comes but for now, you are free to tour our halls as you so wish." she said softly, obviously trying to contain her amusement.

Tony gave a small half smirk as he gave a half bow, "Thank you for your generosity." before they left the throne room.

As they got further away, Clint punched his shoulder as he said, "How'd you know what to do? I would have expected you to start an intergalactic war with your big mouth."

"Excuse you," Tony counted as he crossed his arms and put his nose in the air, a slight smirk to his lips, "I've met plenty of royalty in my time and I've gone to enough stupid private boarding schools to know how to be respectful when I need to!"

"How many did you go to?" Bruce asked, referring to the stupid private schools.

"I don't know, I lost count after the fifth one they expelled me from..." Tony replied, brows furrowed slightly as he tried to remember how many before giving up and shrugging.

“What the hell did you do?" Steve asked, the same time that Bruce asked, “Why did the others accept you?”

Tony only rolled his eyes, "I may have pranked the Dean and the Head Master once or twice… or maybe all the time? It's not my fault that they couldn't take a joke! And they took me in because I was Tony Stark, anyone would have killed to have gone to the same school as I did. You know, I'm kind of famous..." He deadpanned and then looked at Thor with amusement bright in his brown eyes, "So, what's this about you fan-boying over me?"

At this, Thor's cheeks dusted a light pink, "I know not of what you speak..."

Tony could do nothing but laugh.

 

\----------

 

Not long after the meeting, Thor lead the Avengers to a busier part of the palace. More Aesir were coming and going, servants and nobles alike, flowing through the halls in a direct manner. Most were too busy to spare a whole second to properly observe the group, quickly bowing to the Prince or nodding at him with respect before they were once again on their merry way. It was only a few that seemed to catch onto the non-Aesir party that surrounded their Prince, giving them looks of curiosity and mild interest before carrying on with their busy schedule.

A right, then a left, another left, and another, they appeared in front of a pair of doors, less grander than the doors to the King and Queen's throne room, made up of a rich, oaken door with simple gold rings to pull them open. When they stepped inside, Tony had to suppress a groan as he found out where they were; the Asgardian gymnasium... Tony could practically feel the joy coming off of Steve and Natasha in waves as they laid eyes on the heavy-duty workout equipment that lined the gym and a raised platform in the middle which was obviously a fighting ring. He had no doubt that Natasha's new goal would be to become the Queen of the fighting-ring...

The occupants in the gym instantly stopped what they were doing when the doors opened, their collective eyes brightened at the sight of their Prince.

"Thor!" they all chorused, eyes brightening further when Thor gave them all a large grin of his own (Tony couldn't help but feel that they were even more puppy-ish than Thor...).

"My friends!" Thor boomed before he enveloped each one of them into a painful looking hug, although they didn't show that they were in any pain (damn Asgardians...).

Thor's Aesir friends seemed to consist of three men and a female, all of them wore battle armour, weapons hanging by their sides. It didn't take Tony long to relate Thor's immortal friends to the file he'd gotten from SHIELD about New Mexico, the mission that Coulson had to leave for by the end of his palladium poisoning.

It was a second later that Thor's friends seemed to notice the other intruders as the woman imminently became defensive, hand gripping the leather-bound handle of her sword as she narrowed her eyes in suspicion. The men seemed a lot more friendly than the scary woman and either smiled at them in greeting or nodded their hello.

The Thunder god seemed to notice his friends' shift in tension as he frowned in confusion at the woman. Glanced back at the Avengers, his confused frown morphing into one of realisation before he beamed again and stepped aside for them to introduce one another.

"Greetings," The largest of the men started before they all seemed to strike a boy-band pose, chests broadening and chins lifting higher, "We are Lady Sif," he gestured to the woman, who had also struck a stance, "And the Warriors Three: Hogun, Fandral and Volsatgg." Each of the man nodding when their name was mentioned.

After their introductions were over, a silence filtered between the two groups, the silence growing thicker the longer they faced off one another. Tony, seeing this, sighed as he stepped forward, a friendly smile gracing his lips, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Thor’s told us a lot about all of you," Tony then proceeded to point to each of his teammates, "This is Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk/The Amazing Bruce Banner, Captain America and I'm Iron Man or Tony Stark, either way really. We're The Avengers."

Once he finished, the mood seemed to brighten, Thor giving him a discreetly thankful nod which Tony returned in kind. Glaring, Tony looked to Steve, silently asking where the hell his 1940's superior manners disappeared to - at least he had the decency to look a bit sheepish.

"Man of Iron," the blond - Fandral - called, eyes bright, "Would you like to battle? I have heard much of your skill and wish to see!"

Grinning, Tony nodded and they went to their different corners of the platform, their teams around the edges. Tony didn't miss the overconfident smirk the man sent Sif and the other men, their own overconfident smirks revealing their thoughts of Tony being an easy fight. Honestly, sometimes, Tony felt like he was surrounded by children! However, when seeing this, a new surge of determination flowed through him; he wasn't just doing it to win the match, he was doing it to show that humans were just as good as a god (or something along them lines)!

Eyes roved over his opponent, easily pointing out weaknesses and what kind of fighting style he would take up. Going through one scenario after the other, Tony watched as the god of fuck-knows-what pulled out his long dagger and went for the lunge. Expertly, Tony twisted out of the way, his lessons of ballet and gymnastics making his moves look effortless and graceful, he ducked under the rebound attack that came towards his head, sliding along the floor and kicking the god in the backs of his knees, making him go down. Tony swiftly stood back up and aimed a precise and deadly high kick to the man's arm, making drop his weapon before Tony gave him a stamp-kick to his back, forcing the Aesir on his front and making him slide several feet before he stopped. The god completely down of the count... It only took place in a matter of seconds...

Tony stood back up, his sudden smile breaking out of his blank expression that had taken over as he fought. Shocked silence greeted Tony's victory from the ignorant Aesir and cheers and praise came from his team - his family.

Leaving the blond to groan quietly on the floor, Tony jumped down and allowed them to crow his victory and pat him on the back while Steve hugged him, a beaming smile full of pride and love directed only at Tony.

"Well done, my friend!" Thor boomed, eyes gleaming with mirth, "I have never seen you defeat your opponent with such speed! By the Nine!"

Their victory was then interrupted when the other immortals came over, Fandral still slightly dazed, Sif's face displaying pure disbelief, "Truly, you are a magnificent Warrior! I must ask, how did you defeat Fandral so swiftly!"

Politely, Tony smiled and simply said, "I analysed my situation."

At Sif's confused face, Tony looked to Thor for help into explaining it to Sif's understanding. Thor only nodded, "Friend Antony-“ “It’s Tony, Thor." "- Has one of the fastest minds in his Realm! Able to analyse a situation with a mere glance!"

"Of course I can!" Tony started, frowning but eyes glistening with amusement, "I run a billion dollar company which employ thousands, if not millions, of people around the world and I do most of the paperwork! Do you know how fast I have to read to finish it all in time?!"

At this, Tony went into a rant, explaining in too complicated science and business terms that none, not even Bruce, understood. Immune to Tony's constant babbling, Steve found it amusing to see the Warriors blinking at Tony owlishly as they tried to decipher what no Aesir could begin to comprehend; All-Speak was useless in the face of Tony Stark... Steve didn't know whether to be exasperated by that fact or extremely proud.

Side-eyeing Thor's other friends, Steve couldn't help a small dislike blooming for the group. He didn't like the fact that they picked out Tony to fight against the god, judging his amazing fella by his seize (Tony was always noticeably the smallest of the team), thinking him the weakest and the easiest to take out. Steve also didn't miss the look the blond Aesir was giving Tony after the beat down. The man's eyes was a mixed emotion of wonder and shock... Like when Steve felt when he started to get to know the real Tony...

Fandral was slowly inching towards the 'danger of beating-up' zone in Steve's eyes.

Subtly, Steve slinked his arm around Tony's shoulders, his entire being seeming to warm when Tony instinctively leaned into his touch. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve noticed Fandral's eyes flicker from Tony to Steve before settling back on Tony... Yeah, that guy was really close to knowing what a Super Soldier pummelling felt like...

They spent a few more hours in the gym, laughing and exchanging stories as well as going to the platform to fight one another now and then. By the end of it, Natasha had won every match set before her and was unofficially declared winner of the ring. No one had wanted to suffer a humiliating defeat by Tony again so he wasn't asked, much to his own relief. Fandral had tired to talk to Tony the entire time, which pissed off Steve even more...

 

\----------

 

After meeting the famous and most honourable warriors of Asgard, the Avengers went to bed, dressing themselves in baggy clothing and obediently going to their rooms to rest. However, Tony did not find sleep easily, his conscious brain plagued him as well as his awaiting horrors in his dreams; the fear and uncomfortableness of being in an unknown place also keeping sleep at arms reach. His own room was large and spacious, little meaningless trinkets decorating the surfaces in the room, everything was polished to perfection and lined with gold, making it look grand and fit for royalty, the opposite to Tony's own comfortable room. On Earth, Tony's room was considerably smaller than the rest of the Avengers, with plain furniture and family photos of all stages in his life all dotted around the room, blue-prints and bits of loose gears and night time projects he fiddles with covering the surfaces.

An hour of attempted sleep and Tony had given up, eyes open and staring unseeingly into the dark. Expecting for that to be the case for the rest of the night, he didn’t expected for his door to open a crack, letting light stream into his room. It wasn't until the person carefully stepped into the room that Tony recognised the intruder.

"Couldn't sleep, huh?" Tony asked, voice a low whisper and yet seemed so loud in the dark quietness of the room.

Through the shadows, Tony saw the red curls of hair bounce slightly as she nodded. Without further hesitation, that she wouldn't show to anyone but Tony and Clint, Natasha crawled into the bed, her own pillow placed next to Tony's and gripped Tony's hand in her own, squeezing lightly before relaxing her grip.

They didn't say anything more as they laid together, both of them staring into the darkness, unwilling to go to sleep and unwilling to be alone.

Only a few minutes passed before there was another small, near undetectable knock on the door, opening slightly to reveal shortly cropped blond hair and an impressive height - Tony would have noticed Steve anywhere. The Super Soldier continued his trek into the room, feet falling softly and holding his own pillow as he went to Tony's other side and crawled into bed, the same as Natasha did, his arms circling loosely around Tony, holding his free hand as he did so.

Not long after Steve entered, Bruce wondered in, a fluffy blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he shuffled into the room. Finding the comfiest chair nearest to the bed he settled down - Bruce had always preferred a chair to the bed he was given, anyway, so it was nothing new.

It was no surprise when the door opened once again and revealed the head of Clint peering around the door, a small tired grin on his face, "So, we're having a slumber party in Tony's room?" He asked, a small amount of amusement and hopefulness filtered into his voice.

"Get in here, Bird Brain." Was all Tony said, barely visible from his cuddle pile that consisted of the Super Soldier and the Super Spy.

Without any more hesitation, Clint ran and jumped onto the bed, making the occupants bounce slightly and sighed with content, laying across everyones feet at the foot of the bed. Tony could only huff a small laugh at the man's antics and he was sure that a few others rolled their eyes as they secretly smiled at the archer.

One by one, they all dropped off to sleep...

 

\----------

 

In the morning, they were woken up early, Thor smiling slightly at the Avengers all huddled together, keeping one another company in the strange Realm that wasn't their own. Breakfast was an uneventful affair as the Avengers dressed in the clothes that was given to them the other day and entered into the hall with many others to eat the hot food that was so much different from their own. The only eventful thing that happened was that Fandral was eyeing Tony from the opposite end of the table, unable to sit next to the genius with the Avengers sitting around him on all sides (all except Tony catching onto Fandral's lingering gaze on the genius).

After breakfast was eaten, Tony and the rest of the group was called over to Frigga and she lead them down a hallway near the throne room. The hallway itself was empty... Obviously, it was freshly cleaned and had the same fancy and over expensive ornaments but there was not a soul in sight, like people purposefully avoided ever wondering down those particular halls. Tony shivered slightly at the hollow cold he felt compared to the grand and warm halls that made up the rest of the palace.

It was only a few more paces down the hall before they stopped at a door, a door that seemed just as cold as the rest of the hallway, and opened it. Tony was the only one to go in but he didn't really mind (Steve minded but that's beside the point). The room was already alight with the natural light of the sun, golden rays filtering in through the parted curtains and into the room.

At first, it looked like no one was there. Tony couldn't feel anyone, alive or dead and the place looked deserted with only a thin layer of dust coating the surface. Well, he thought there was no one there, until a kid of around ten years old jumped out from the overly large wardrobe and scared the living shit out of him.

Tony would forever deny ever screaming like a girl in that moment...

Clutching his heart, Tony breathed in a deep lungful of air and let it out, all the while, glaring at the giggling kid that was rolling back and forth on the bedding - the dust not even moving. The youngster, that was obviously Balder, was over a head shorter than Tony and he had brilliantly bright blue eyes much like Thor's and Frigga's. The kid wore strange clothes, different from the shining armour that appeared to be the general fashion in Asgard, as he wore a dark blue, flimsy long sleeved shirt, a slit at the neck of the shirt and done up loosely with a black bit of string. He wore simple leather trousers and worn brown boots as well as what looked to be a tool belt hanging on his hips, a few tools and small possessions pocking out from the pockets. Not a scrap of metal to be seen on the kid.

"Oh- Oh by the Nine! I've never seen someone so close to loosing control of their bowls!" The kid howled before he went back into his laughing fit all over again (Clint and this kid would get along brilliantly if they could ever meet...).

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Tony huffed, his pride a little sore, "Laugh all you want kid and I didn't nearly piss myself! You nearly gave me a damn heart attack..." Tony grumbled lastly, crossing his arms and pouting slightly.

Then, just as suddenly as the kid came, he stopped laughing and sat bolt upright in his bed and gave Tony the most disbelieving look he had ever seen. It honestly almost broke Tony’s heart at just how lonely and how forgotten the kid had been for god knows how many years, trapped in an unseen plane and unable to connect, to contact, anyone.

"You can see me?" The kid asked, disbelief colouring his voice and rising hope shining in his eyes.

Lightly chuckling, Tony nodded as he sat down on the bed with a small huff as he sunk into the feathery softness, "Yeah. And I hear that your name's Balder. Name's Tony Stark." he introduced as he leaned against the delicately carved post at the foot of the bed, making himself at home.

Balder stared at Tony for half a minute before he stepped closer, eyes curious as he regarded Tony, eyes flickering from his scars, to his eyes to his armoured arm and then to the blue glow in his chest. "Where do you hail, my seeing friend?"

"Earth. Or Midgard, as you call it here." Tony replied, smirking when the kid looked even more interested.

"I did not know that Midgard had become so developed," Balder said, more to himself than to Tony, as he looked as the Arc Reactor, "I have never before felt this sort of energy! The All-Father must commend your Realm greatly for it's new stretches in magic!"

At that last bit, Tony spluttered a little; the pride he felt all the while the kid was talking, very suddenly plummeted back down to zero, "No!" Tony practically cried, "It's technology! It's an element that I created! Don't you dare compare my heart to _magic_!" Tony hissed playfully, spitting out the word 'magic' like it was poisonous, in an over dramatic act.

Confusion seemed to take over the kid's face before he understood Tony's mock anger and burst into laughter; his eyes brightening in his momentary joy. As Balder calmed down, more like wheezed, he looked back to Tony with a new spark in his eyes and sat next to the mortal genius. The pair talked and laughed for a few minutes as the boy spoke of Thor and Loki's antics as children and his knowledge of different enchantments that could be fused with weapons to make them better, even attempting to teach Tony some of the interesting spells which they found that Tony couldn't do due to his non-magic wielding status.

"Son of Stark," Balder started with bright eyes, his eyes already getting larger in his attempt to look puppy-ish and preparing to pout, "You must tell me of your story on Midgard! I would like to know of the heroics and hardships my new friend has to tell!"

Tony could only smile slightly wider when he realised that Balder got as loud as Thor whenever he was too excited but was like Loki when he was calm and collected. Cocking his eye-brow, Tony gave the kid a long look, as if to look like he was considering and was not as hypnotised by the adorable expression as he actually was, "You wanna know my life story? beginning to end?" he asked, his smirk loosing a bit of his brightness as he said, "Not all of it is flowers and rainbows. I have scars for a reason, kid, and it's not pretty on how I got them..."

Balder went quiet, a serious expression coming to his face as he placed his hand on Tony's, a gentle pressure instead of physical feeling as the boy's solidity implied. His voice was even and left no room for jokes, showing his complete seriousness, "I understand, Son of Stark, but I wish to know of your life. If you will allow me to..." He trailed off, uncertainty colouring his voice and lowering his head slightly.

Clasping his hand on the kid's shoulder, Tony gave him a reassuring smile when he looked back up, "Sure, kid, I don't mind."

Then Tony had to go on for three hours, sparing no detail about the life he'd lived so far. He told the kid about his early years, from Colonel Phillips and his cold father to Rhodey and his wild MIT days to the day he took over the company and Happy and Pepper, to Ho Yinsen dying and keeping him company even after he died, to Iron Man. As well as SHIELD and the palladium poisoning, to Loki and the Avengers. He told of his friendships, to their discovery of his power, to his time with Steve and his kidnapping with the dark and twisted spirit. And finally, coming to Asgard and being dressed up in the armour.

The entire time, Balder listened, entrapped in the story as if by an enchantment, eyes growing wide with wonder and horror, coming to near tears when Tony spoke of his troubles in his short life.

By the end of it, there was a silence between them as Tony waited for the kid to take it all in. When Balder looked back up at Tony, his face was solemn while his eyes were genuine, "I thank you, Midgardian Warrior, Man of Iron, Son of Stark," he said the different titles like they were honours he was bestowing on Tony, "I had not expected such a tale of woe in short a life span as your's. You have earned your battle scars and I encourage you to wear them with pride." He seemed to hesitate a little before he speaks again, uncertainty lining his face, "May I ask how your story will end?"

Tony gave a twitch of a smile at the kid and nodded his head in thanks, "A bang and a pop, and, hopefully, a wedding ring one day." He nudged the kid's shoulder with a small smile and the kid smiled back. The beautifully genuine smile, however, did not stay for long.

Standing up from his perch on the bed, Balder looked at Tony with the most serious expression that Tony had ever seen on a kid his age (or equivalent to his age), "As a gift for your generosity for telling me your painful story, I will bestow upon you, a fragment of my magic. Use it wisely, Man of Iron, for if you use it wrongly, you will suffer the dire consequences that are not by my hand."

Tony frowned in confusion but it was replaced with a look of recognition when the kid seemed to start to glow from the very core of his soul. A warm gold light brightened every darkened corner of the room, engulfing Tony in the light like a cocoon. Looking at the kid, Tony was slightly shocked to see his eyes emitting an electric blue glow, his smile a little sad but happy nonetheless. It was like a golden flower blooming from the kid's chest but when bright golden tendrils started to sprout out from Balder's chest, Tony knew something other than the kid's passing was going on.

Before he could really do anything, the gold tendrils slammed into him, making Tony gasp as he felt himself filling with something beautiful and wondrous. When the last of the tendrils made it's way to Tony's chest, he looked up at the kid, unaware that his eyes were glowing a faint gold along the brown rim of his eyes.

"I am sure my Mother will explain it to you when she feels a piece of my magic mixed with your's. You are a good man, Tony Stark, and I wish you happiness in your life." And with that, Balder brightened further to blinding levels before it immediately died down. Balder wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

All Tony could do was frown slightly, unbeknownst to him that the glow in his eyes had died down once again to his normal honey brown, and left the room with a slightly forlorn expression; it was always heart breaking to see them leave, no matter how long he knew them for...

 

\----------

 

After he'd told the Queen that he'd done and that Balder had passed on, she had immediately ran off to tell her husband the good news. Within the hour, the All-Father had notified everyone of the party, or feast as he put it, in the great hall to celebrate Balder's moving on.

However, before Tony knew it, he'd been spirited away by a couple of guards (separated from Steve and the others) and into the throne room once again. However, this time when the doors closed, all the guards stationed in the room went with it, Tony couldn't help a small twinge of fear as the giant doors closed with a small bang that echoed throughout the room.

Slowly, he turned to face the happy couple, Frigga smiling brightly at Tony, a spark of interest in her eye and Odin... Well, he assumed Odin was smiling... on the inside at least. Taking a deep breath, Tony let his respectful business side take over as he walked to a few feet away from the stairs, where he had stopped that last time he was there, and lowered his eyes slightly.

"I must give thanks for your services in Asgard, Man of Iron, we are truly indebted to you," began Odin, chin held high and his face carefully blank but there was a relieved sort of twinkle in the man's eye, "My son tells me that there is not much of simple things we could gift you: riches, food and knowledge, are things you have already acquainted. You are a very successful man, Son of Stark, and with your excelling success in life on Midgard as well as achieving many titles to add to your name; I cannot even offer you magic as you have already acquired it from my passed son," he added, an amused smile curling the corner of his thinned lips, "With every truth discovered from my eldest's feverish stories of The Great Man of Iron, I find myself impressed further and further still. That is the reason that my wife and I have decided to grant you one of Idun's Apples; a gift, to you, of immortality."

Tony stood there, frozen on the spot with wide eyes as Odin pulled out a golden apple for him to see before he carried on, "I would be honoured to have you join Asgard as a fellow warrior and as a rare Spirit Walker, if you choose to be."

The last bit had Tony snapping his mouth closed, which he was unaware that he had opened, and let himself breath out a discreet sigh of relief. At least he wouldn't try and force him into it.

With their expectant looks, Tony hurriedly replied, "Thank you for the reward but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. Earth, or Midgard, is my home and I'd like to have the same life expectancy as everyone else. And I finally have someone to share it with." Tony added, a small smile gracing his lips at the thought of Steve (God! He was head over heels for that man).

Odin seemed to nod, unsurprised by Tony choice.

It was then Frigga's turn to speak as she stood up from her throne and walked down the steps so that she was level with Tony. Her smile was bright and her eyes even more so, "I can sense a new energy about you, Man of Iron, and I am even more pleased that my son has found someone suitable enough to pass on his gift to." At Tony's frown of confusion, Frigga explained further, "Our youngest was as magically inclined, as Loki, was as well as a warrior in training before his passing... As you probably know, energy cannot be made and cannot be extinguished and with Balder's magic, he would have had to find a reliable source to transfer to. When we called upon you, we were told of your deeds and you misfortunes and we hoped that you would be worthy in my son's eyes to pass on his magic and finally put him at peace."

At this, suddenly everything made a little more sense and he let out a small, "Ooooooooohhhhhh....."

Frigga only smiled before she carried on, "The magic that he had gifted to you was only a small amount and due to your abilities with the invisible plane, magic will come to you more easily than most. However, I will put a lock on your powers, if at any point you start to loose control without a steady flow of build up, it will immediately shut down and the only evidence of your magic will be in your eyes before it settles back down once again." Her expression suddenly morphed from her pleased state to something with the utmost seriousness, "However, as my son most likely warned you, if you should chose to cause dire happenings with the magic gifted to you, other forces other than us would either wish to destroy you or to manipulate you. Do not let this happen Man of Iron."

"I wont," Tony stated, a small amount of fear sunk into Tony chest but the surge of determination he felt was much greater, "I promise you, your Majesty, I wont if my team or I can help it."

In answer the Queen smiled and nodded, turning away to walk back up the stairs and sat in her throne.

There was a second of silence before Odin spoke up again, a barely there smile on his lips, "I thank you again, Man of Iron, and If you so wish something from us, you must only ask."

With only a spilt second of thinking, Tony let off an evil grin and he opened his mouth to ask, "Well..."

 

\----------

 

"I got a selfie with Thor's parents!" Tony yelled when he greeted the team, blindingly happy about this accomplishment, "And we can also take home the Asgardian armour!"

There was was silence in the room before Clint jumped up and did a loud, "Whoop!" with a fist in the air.

That was all it took for Steve and the rest of the group to shake out of it, "You did what?" the Super Soldier asked with astonishment, like he didn't quite believe what Tony had just told them.

"I got a selfie with Queen Frigga and Odin All-Daddy." Tony said completely innocently, "And we can keep the clothes." he added, gesturing to their artier.

Natasha could only (fondly) roll her eyes at Tony's excitement and everyone ignored Thor correction for the "All-Father" and grabbed Clint, who had been dancing around in celebration of being able to keep the clothes, and Tony before she walked out of the room, calling behind her, "Come on or we'll be late to the party."

 

\----------

 

The party itself reminded Tony of one of his charity balls, there was music and people dancing on the dance floor and servants weaving in and out of the crowds with trays of foods and drinks. However, it was also completely different. For instance, the guests were loud, jolly and boisterous. They wore the same clothes as they usually did; it was like having fifty Thors in one room. There were drinking competitions and people jumping on and off of tables and people coming up to Tony to just talk to him instead of trying to get a business deal out of him.

The hall room seemed to come alive with low music and good cheer and Tony found himself actually smiling. All sorts of people came up to him, telling him their titles and gushing about their passed battles and their wives and children. Tony even found himself taking part, going over some passed battles and Pepper's antics as well as Steve's, laughing almost as hard as he does in private! He even got dragged into dancing at one point; all of them linking arms and weaving in and out of the crowds as they clapped along to the beat.

A slow couples song came on and Natasha whisked Steve away to the dance floor so Tony could get a drink, that he surely needed, with a tankard of watered down meed (the actual stuff would have given any mortal alcohol poisoning with just one mouthful) when he was approached by one of Thor's friends. The blond one of the three men strode over to Tony, a swagger in his hips and radiating confidence as he gave Tony one of his flirtatious smiles; it kind of reminded Tony of a younger him...

"Good evening, Man of Iron," He greeted as he leaned on the table next to them and leant towards Tony ever so slightly.

Tony only nodded, slightly uncomfortable as he couldn't remember the man's name for the life of him!

"Word spreads that the All-Father has offered you an apple to live among us," The man starts, obviously going somewhere with this.

"He did," Tony answered casually, "Why?"

"I wondered if you should take it and come with me?"

Tony frowned, faking confusion as he felt a build up of dread in his stomach. Did this guy know that he wasn’t available? He’d seen the god around Thor and with the rest of the Avengers and it wasn’t like he and Steve were hiding it… “Er… What?” He asked, hoping against hope that his flirting instincts were wrong.

At this point, the god was leaning dangerously close, a devious smirk on his lips, "I am inviting you to my bed, Man of Iron. I have never known of any such mortal to have done as you have! You have astonished many of this Realm with your gifts and I would be honoured to have you with me. If not for eternity, then for one blessed night, perhaps?"

Well… That was unexpected...

He expected some flirting, maybe, but not a declaration of love!

"Listen... Fandral..." Yes! Right name! "I'm not sure if you've seen but--"

"He's taken." Came a strong, masculine voice from behind Tony. He would have laughed with relief if he'd been anywhere but here. Stepping backwards, Tony let out a small sigh of relief when he left the familiar chest of his boyfriend and team leader, taking comfort as Steve put his hand in Tony's own, entwining their fingers together in unison.

Steve was staring down at the other man, light blue eyes turning to the icy blue as a possessive light came to them. With a sneer at the shocked, and sad-looking god, Steve held onto Tony's hand tighter and dragged him out onto the dance floor. Putting Tony's arms around his neck, Steve lead them into a slow dance. They were both silent throughout the dance as they stared into each other's eyes, showing one another equal love and fondness for one another.

As the night grew on, people were becoming increasingly more drunk and soon, the Aesir around them were chanting for them to show one of their own Midgardian dances. With a grin and a nod to Natasha, Tony made his way into the middle of the cleared dance floor and all became silent. A beat started and Tony began to move, slowly, starting from the swaying of his hips to doing complicated twirls. Holding out his hand, Natasha came spinning towards him and together, with one another's complete trust, they executed flips and spins as well as throws and footwork, taking the entirety of the dance floor with their over complicated dance. It was elegant and beautiful as Tony threw Natasha up in the air and caught her, making the audience gasp with the extremities of it all.

The dance lasted for only a few minutes and with a final dip, both straightened up and bowed towards their mouth-gaping audience, not even clapping with how stunned they were. Well, except Clint, Bruce, Thor and Steve, who clapped with their jaws still on the floor as they had seen that kind of dancing but had never witnessed Natasha and Tony to be able to do it.

In an instant, the crowd around them were in an uproar, commending them for their 'Dance of War' and openly wondering how mortals were able to come up with something so beautifully complicated. Even Odin expressed his own curiosity about the dance and the trust between two people for it to be completed.

Not long after, the group said their goodbyes to the royal family, and the others they had made friends with in their short stay there, and soon enough they were on the Bifrost Bridge and getting beamed down to Earth.

 

\----------

 

Settling down for the night, Tony could only sigh in content as he felt Steve put his arms around him, the muscles in his back and shoulders instantly relaxing in the safety and security of his room and Steve. Tony hummed slightly when he felt warm lips over his neck, pressing butterfly kisses up his his jaw line.

"I didn't know you could dance like that." Steve mumbled into his neck, slightly grumpy "It seems like every time I think I know everything you can do, something new comes up."

Tony ginned slightly as he joked back, "Don't lie, you love it really. It's what you liked about me isn't it? That there was something more to the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist that I put on for show."

"It goes far beyond those four small labels, everyone on the team knows that now, " Steve said, voice earnest in his ear, "Inventor, mechanic, scientist, doctor, baker, martial artist, Iron Man, Spirit Walker, a professional dancer, and I don't even know how many instruments you play or how many languages you can speak. How's the ballet going right now, anyway?"

Tony nodded, expression contemplating, "I play piano, violin, guitar, ukulele and the flute. Excluding English, I know French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Greek, Latin, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, Hebrew, Kurdish and American Sign language. Ballet's going fine thank you, Nat and I are going to open up a chain of studios for dance, gymnastics and ballet around New York." Steve gave Tony a deadpanned stare as the man rattled off, although the genius was either oblivious to it or ignored it, "I also do gymnastics and I'm also a sorcerer as well, now."

The last comment rode a bit into silence between them as Steve processed what he said and Tony waited for the inevitable explosion...

"When did this happen?" Steve asked, voice curious but not wary (Tony could hardly hold it against him if he was wary, especially with all the people they fight with magical powers).

"In Asgard. Apparently, Thor's little bro had some magic and to pass on he would have had to give his magic to someone else." Tony explained off handedly, "With Thor fan-boying over me, his parents thought that I was 'worthy' of his magic and apparently, I was." he finished off flippantly, trying to dial down how extreme it actually was.

There was silence between them for a few minutes before Steve gave a long suffering sigh and buried his face into the side of Tony's neck like he was attempting to hide from the world.

"Only you..." He mumbled miserably as he relaxed against Tony's body.

Tony, feeling the small tendrils of long-suffering fondness directed at him from Steve (his small amount of magic showing through in empathy), gave a great belly laugh at Steve's comment.

Everything was going to be fine...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, guys! This is not part of the story, just so you know.

I had some ideas for what the amour would look like and here’s the link for each of them:

[Tony Stark](http://fav.me/dbk8lpe)  
[Steve Rogers](http://fav.me/dbk8lpo)  
[Bruce Banner](http://fav.me/dbk8loy)  
[Clint Barton](http://fav.me/dbk8lp6)  
[Natasha Romanov](http://fav.me/dbk8lor)

Hope you like them!!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They’re not the best drawings but I’m mainly a writer for a reason
> 
> Anyway, last chapter soon!  
> Next one will be shorter than this one (if I don’t get carried away with it)  
> Will post soon! Promise!


	7. The years come to pass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! So this is the last chapter!

Thirty years later...

Tony couldn’t have ever imagined his life turning out like it did. For an old, damaged, ex-weapons trader like him, he would have never imagined that he would be married to anyone as beautiful and as pure as Steve Rogers. Right now, as he laid next to the super soldier, his golden hair going silver at the sides and happy wrinkles forming around his eyes, Tony couldn’t help but recall all the good and bad that they had been put through…

Shortly after their return trip from Asgard, the team had been called out to battle. It had been a brutal one and Steve was surrounded by robots with chainsaws for arms, swinging this way and that (don’t ask, Tony was confused about it too). Cap was getting over-whelmed and it wasn’t until one clipped his shoulder did Tony see a flash of golden rage cross his vision. The next thing that happened was that Steve was surrounded by a golden dome shield and Tony was standing in front of him, _all_ the robots disassembling with a flick of his hand and ending the fight in an instant.

The next day, it was all over the news that Tony was the new sorcerer in the city and Fox News started to spew out their ridiculous conspiracy theories; one even said that he’d sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the power to rule the world like Loki attempted… Tony and Clint ended up laughing at that one until Tony was red in the face and Clint was wheezing on the floor! Tony wasn’t really concerned in all honesty, he would have had to come out sooner or later when he kept on appearing younger and younger (through no fault on his own) and he couldn’t blame it on botox for long when he looked like he was in his twenties!

The theories were thrown around for a while and it was starting to get ridiculous even by Tony’s standards but it was soon over shadowed by what Steve did in the middle of Central Park. After their secret date, (Tony having many connections and enough disguises to go unnoticed by nearly everyone) they’d bought an ice-cream to end the night. What had taken Tony by surprise was when Steve pulled off his hat and glasses as well as Tony’s before the man kissed him in the middle of the crowd as well as knocking Tony’s chocolate mint over in the process. Not an hour later, Steve and Tony were all over the internet and their ‘ship’ names in the newspapers by morning…

Not a year later, Steve had gotten down on one knee in the exact same spot and asked Tony to marry him. They were all over the internet within minutes…

After Pepper and Natasha’s rant, Tony and Steve finally allowed them to plan the wedding themselves. In the end, they had the wedding in Asgard, allowing them to have a private wedding with just friends, Frigga and Odin were more than happy to host the wedding for the mortal that helped their youngest son. Even Thor’s friends had attended, cheering loudly when they said ‘yes’. Later on, they had a more public wedding to make it legal by Earth’s standards. It was a lot more crowded with people coming up to them with fake smiles or cameras in their hands but they didn’t care, they'd already had their perfect wedding and that was the one they would cherish forever.

In the years after their wedding, the Avengers had lots of more fights and had made more enemies than any of them could keep track of and it soon became apparent that they needed more than just the six members to help defend the world. It became more of a problem when Thor had to extend his leavings from Earth to take care of Asgard. Through the years, the Avengers had grown to astounding lengths, allowing mutants, enhanced as well as non-powered people with special skills to join the ranks of defending the world. Bases were set up all over America at first but it soon began going world wide. Schools for potential heroes were set up and the Avengers had made deals and offers with all kinds of countries and superhero teams: the main ones being Wakanda, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.

Two years into Thor’s dwindling available times, the original Avengers team were whizzed off to Asgard once again and dressed up even more formally than they were the first time they were there. It was only a day into their stay that they found out that they would be witness to Thor’s coronation! A few days later, they were all lined up along with Sif and the Warriors Three at the front of the throne room, pact with cheering and joyful Aesir. It wasn’t long before Thor was walking down the aisle, a happy grin on his face as he stood tall and strong, armour gleaming brilliantly, and he nodded at his Midgardian Shield Brothers and Sister, before he kneeled beside the steps. It was a beautiful ceremony and Tony couldn’t be more proud of his friend. By the end of it, Thor was announced the new King of Asgard and everyone cheered in his good rule as the King. Shortly after, Thor made a pact with Iron Man and Captain America of Midgard to call aid to one another when in dire need of one another’s help.

Making their way back to Earth, Tony could already feel the impending headache from all the shouting Fury was going to do for not being included. First, the old pirate was going to yell about taking a holiday without notification and then he was going to shout about the deal that he wasn’t present for… God, Tony hated his job sometimes…

Another two years went by with a steady flow of newbies. The year that Wolverine decided to make a transfer to the Avengers was the year that Tony and Steve finally became parents. After years and years of studying alongside Bruce, Tony was able to make a sperm and egg cells with both his own and Steve’s DNA. Nine months later, they finally had their little boy, that they named James Bucky Stark-Rogers after both of their best friends. It was hard at first and Tony had to take few years off of Avengers duty to look after his son as well as make designs for SI and Steve had to become a part time Avenger for two years (only called on for absolute emergencies) and leaving Rhodey and Bucky in charge as joint leaders. The couple had a few arguments over the decision to take a break, Tony wanted to fight the different threats to protect his child while Steve said they needed to put their child first. However, it was all worth it when they got to experience all of their child’s accomplishments, such as little James’ first words, his first school play, his first steps, his first drawing. Tony even found himself relaxing by the end of the years, completely content with his life and it was even more relaxing due to the fact that he didn’t have to worry about his kid being kidnapped, left, right, and centre, like what happened to him when he was young (the criminals and villains were all too scared to have a powerful a team such as the Avengers after their heads).

A couple of months after their first born, the Stark-Rogers ended up with three more kids.

Two came in a care package. After his dealing with Extremis and all the exploding people, Tony had kept in touch with Harley and, later on, his sister named Stephanie. The Keeners were a nice family, despite the father’s idiocy but when their mother passed way, they had little to no options left for them other than the Foster homes or the Orphanage and so, around one in the morning, Harley had called Tony, crying his eyes out and at a loss of what to do. In seconds, Tony was flying over there in his Iron Man suit and giving the papers in to adopt the Keener siblings. It was all over the news about Tony and Steve taking in parentless children and how noble they were. Harley was already fifteen at the time and Stephanie was only three years younger, making her only twelve with no parents. It was obviously hard at first, with the baby still in his teething stage and adopting two more children. What was hardest on Tony were the nights he had to spend with his two older children, rocking them back and forth as they cried and sobbed about the mother they’d lost and how they were going to carry on without her… It took time but they were soon happy, smiling children once again and finally started to settle.

Their last one came by the name of Peter Parker. The kid had joined one of the new vigilante programs that Tony had busted his neck in finalising and the kid had clicked with basically everyone in the Avengers compound. Spider-Man had became everyones unofficial little mascot and he came by everyday for at least an hour or two. However, when the Spiderling failed to show after the third day, the team started to become worried and began searching for him. It didn’t take them long to find the kid and they soon found out that the reason for his sudden disappearance was due to his Aunt, his only remaining family member, dying of breast cancer. The kid was having to go threw the loss by himself and then, straight after the funeral, he would be chucked into the system like so many others before him.

It had been Steve that had brought up adoption that time and Tony didn’t really mind adding another to the family. And then there were four… The loves of his life, the puzzles to his soul, the… Yeah, it was a nightmare but Tony and Steve wouldn’t have it any other way. Especially all the times when they went to each and every one of their graduations with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces, they couldn’t have been any prouder of their babies.

Only a year after they gained three sons and a daughter, a shadow of misfortune fell upon the team… In an epic and equally dangerous mission, Fury and Coulson fell by HYDRA’s hand, their lifeless bodies left in an abandoned base which they had to  fight to get out of when they arrived. It was a huge and sickening blow and everyone was devastated with the loss of the founders of the Avengers. Hundreds, if not thousands, went to their funerals and Tony and Clint were there to fire among the rifles that were lined up in their honour…

With SHIELD having no Director, Hill refusing the position and no one else willing to step up to the podium, Natasha was the nest in line to take up the position. Tony watched as she stood strong and tall among her army of Agents and he couldn’t help but feel proud of her for coming so far in life, from a KGB experiment to the Director of SHIELD. Everyone knew that she would do an amazing job and she exceeded even the highest expectations of her. However, it was sad when she had to leave the Avengers to carry on her days as Director Natasha Romanov.

One and a half years later, their little James was two years old, Peter was moving to England to attend university and Tony was finally back as a part time Avenger. Long ago, Tony had promised Pepper that he would go through with the surgery to remove the Arc Reactor if she were to finally have a kid and a family of her own. When she and Happy got together with a tiny bump on her stomach, Tony knew that the time had come. And by the time Pepper finally gave birth to a daughter that took ages to deliver due to the baby’s stubbornness (took after her mother if Tony had anything to say about it) Tony had rebuilt enough of his chest muscles and had gotten used to the replacement bones enough to come out of physical therapy. He was there with Happy in the waiting room and he was the third one to hold the small child (after Happy and before Rhodey) when Pepper finally stopped screaming.

Tony would forever remember the day that he held his baby niece for the first time as Pepper, worn and exhausted, barely grasped his hand and breathed out, “Toni. Her name is Toni, just like her uncle.”

Toni was a bundle of joy and a new addition to Tony’s ever growing family. He couldn’t be any more happier.

Three years went by quite fast with Tony being a superhero, being a parent and being a CEO (Pepper having stepped down to concentrate on her family) and Tony was content, although it was only a matter of time before they entered Life’s rocky hills once again…

What hit Tony, more than anything - more than the start of having a hole in his chest, more than Obie’s betrayal, more than Yinsen’s death - was when Rhodey died… At first, Tony didn’t believe Natasha when she told him that Rhodey died on a mission as War Machine. He just couldn’t… Then the loss crashed into him like a tidal wave. Strong emotions hitting him, one after the other making his eyes glow a brilliant gold and for tendrils of magic to snake down his fingers, with little no no consent, as his control slipped. For days, he was locked up in his lab, crying and screaming and his magic slipping from his control as it exploded many things throughout his lab. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep and he did nothing but work and work until he was physically injuring himself by doing so. It took Steve two days to finally smash down his titanium blockade and a week to get Tony to talk. It was a steady process but Tony was able to move on with Rhodey’s death. He had to anyway because it wasn’t just about Tony anymore, he had a husband, he had children, he had a family that needed him. In the end, he had to let go of Rhodey but he knew he’d never forget about his best friend that had been with him every step of the way since MIT...

Tony was a little upset that Rhodey didn’t come back as a spirit but at the same time, he was relieved. Not many people had to stay behind and if they did, they could be stuck there for a long, long time, even with Tony’s help.

Nine years down the line, they’ve already seen all their kids off to do different things and the original Avengers had either moved on or was retired with a head of grey hair. They felt it was about time they retired. The others were happy in their retirement: Clint had settled down with a wife and three kids on a farm; Bruce had found Betty Ross again (she was basically his soulmate) and they had gone to a third world country to help with medical supplies and such, settling down among the locals; Thor was happy in Asgard as King; Natasha was still going strong as the Director of SHIELD, even more intimidating with streaks of white in her flaming red hair. With the rest of the former team moving on, Tony and Steve left that it was their time to step down and let someone else take their places. And so, Tony had bought a huge patch of land with a large house in the middle.

Five years later, and that’s where they still were. They had settled in well enough as Tony had his well updated and messy lab and Steve had his own art room with paintings and drawings of captured moments hanging on the walls (it was truly breathtaking and it had some charcoal drawings of Asgard on the walls as well as their team and family). Pictures decorated the halls and Tony couldn’t stop a small smile from forming whenever he walked by one of his kids, or the team, or of Rhodey, Pepper and Happy with baby Toni, or of the selfie that he’d gotten with Frigga and Odin.

Their house was gorgeous with five floors, two above ground, two bellow and a domed conservatory on the roof of it all. Outside was a vegetable patch, that they got their fruit and vegetables from, as a small hobby they both did to pass the time. They had around ten decent seized rooms to house for their friends or kids that came by for a visit now and then. Tony still found it funny that they still liked to swing by like they all used to do when he lived in the Tower. Clint and his kids often staying for the holidays and Natasha crashing over there whenever she needed a small break from SHIELD. Toni didn’t visit as often but she loved her Uncles nonetheless and Pepper came over, often dragging Happy behind her, as she poked holes at their eating habits and tried to mother them as much as she mothered her own daughter.

Tony was a little worse for wear than Steve or anyone else was with their graceful ageing and such. Tony had greys coming out at the sides much like Steve did and had his goatee shaved and replaced with a slat and pepper stubble around his face. He had a dip in his chest where his Arc Reactor used to be and new scars added to the mass that he already had. But he still only looked around late thirties while all of their friends had a head of grey hair and wincing at their old wounds. Peter and Harley were messing around in the R&E Departments at SI, creating biological breakthroughs and new tech to go on the market. James went on to be the new CEO of SI and Stephanie went on to become a great lawyer on the Miami coast but she always face-timed whenever she was too busy to visit. They were all middle aged and in a headway in their careers as well as married with some grandkids for Tony and Steve along the way (Tony was extremely happy about that). Although, Tony couldn’t say he was thrilled when Peter kept on going as Spider-Man and when James became the next Iron Man; it was a dangerous job and no one wanted to see their babies in danger…

Spirits still came by now and again but they usually left Tony alone to get on with his life instead of with the company of invisible eyes. Sometimes, if Tony was able to concentrate long enough, he could get others to see the spirits with the help of his magic. The first time he did it, Clint nearly had a heart attack, Bruce damn near turned green and Steve had a strange look of wonder when he looked at Tony (well, after he got over his shock). Now, Tony was able to get spirits to pass on faster by letting the family members say their proper goodbyes for the last time, although he tried not to do it often as it left him drained and tired for days afterwards.

Nowadays, Steve and Tony spent their time going to the Academy Schools to help young people who wanted to lean control of their powers and set them off in a good direction. Over there, Tony taught educational classes in Science, Math and Simple Mechanics while Steve taught in fighting and control as well as authority in the ranks. It was good and Tony often participated in the control lessons as to demonstrate his control and discipline of his magic.

Sighing, Tony settled down on his side, content to just look at his husband’s baby-face. It wasn’t long until Steve’s eyes fluttered open and focused on his own.

“What?” He mumbled sleepily, brushing grey and blond strands from his face.

Tony hummed as he helped brush Steve’s hair back, “Nothing. I’m just happy your with me.”

Slowly, Steve sat up and turned to look down at Tony fully a small smile on his lips, “Always and forever.” He answered as he leaned down to plant a firm kiss to Tony’s lips.

“You said it, babe.” was all Tony said before he tackled his husband into the sheets, smiling brightly as Steve went down with a chime of laughter. He sighed long-sufferingly before he rolled completely off of Steve, who moaned at the loss of contact, “Later, babe, we gotta prepare breakfast for the Bartons and Petey and his heavily pregnant wife. Also, Steph is coming over this afternoon so up and at ‘em super soldier!” he finished brightly as he walked over to the shower, Steve following diligently.

Yeah, Tony wouldn’t wish their ending to be any different…

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Thats the end of the story! I had lots of fun writing this for all of you and I’m proud of myself for actually completing this! I’m sorry to say goodbye to this piece but now I’ve got some time to spend on the other stories, which I know some of you will be happy to hear about!  
> To be honest, this story was only supposed to be three chapters long when it first started so I think I over wrote for this one...  
> Thanks a lot for reading and thanks for staying with the story to those that have been there since the beginning!  
> See ya!


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